Alice saw her blunder. She saw that she had insulted his ambition; and yet, though she now understood the ferocities of that ambition, it filled her with a definite hostility which made her want to fight and fight and fight it with all the strength she had. At the same time, as his surprise collapsed, his own antagonism rose up. He felt a sudden hatred, not for the girl, but for the forces which somehow he knew she was bringing to oppose him. They faced each other, their eyes bright with challenge, their breasts heaving with a stormier, earthlier emotionand the white flame of antagonism which divided them seemed at the same time to fuse them, melt them into each other.
ONE:"It is strange!" said the monk, "yesterday, the low moaning sound it made, seemed to threaten immediate dissolution; and to-day, its lusty cries seem those of a healthy childit is quiet nowgive me the babe in my arms and let me look at it?"
"Not guilty, my lord," she replied, in a voice so loud and distinct, that the surprised hearers wondered so feeble a creature could possess such a voice.The reader will, perhaps, feel some surprise that an esquire of the rich and powerful Lord de Boteler should be thus competing with the yeoman for the hand of a portionless humble nief; but it is necessary to observe, in the first place, that in the fifteenth century esquires were by no means of the consideration they had enjoyed a century before. Some nobles, indeed, who were upholders of the ancient system, still regarded an esquire as but a degree removed from a knight, but these were merely exceptions;the general rule, at the period we are speaking of, was to consider an esquire simply as a principal attendant, without the least claim to any distinction beyond. Such a state of things accorded well with the temper of De Boteler;he could scarcely have endured the equality, which, in some measure, formerly subsisted between the esquire and his lord. With him the equal might be familiar, but the inferior must be submissive; and it was, perhaps, the humility of Calverley's deportment that alone had raised him to the situation he now held. Calverley, besides, had none of the requisites of respectability which would have entitled him to take a stand among a class such as esquires had formerly been.He expressed himself so eloquently in this fashion that the member for the Rye division of Sussexthe borough had been disenfranchised in '85asked him to speak at a recruiting meeting at the Court Hall. Unluckily Reuben's views on recruiting were peculiar.