"
The request was at once granted, and Sir Eustace, his two esquires, and
the archer rode to Calais, and crossed with the company of the Earl of
Dorset.
For some months Guy remained quietly at Summerley. Agnes, though nearly
sixteen, was still but a young girl, while Katarina had grown still more
womanly during the last six months. The former always treated him as a
brother, but the latter was changeable and capricious. Occasionally she
would laugh and chat when the three were alone, as she had done of old in
Paris, but more often she would tease and laugh at him, while sometimes
she would be shy and silent.
"I cannot make out the young countess, my lady," he said to Dame Margaret
when Katarina had been teasing him even more than usual. "She was never
like this in Paris, and I know not that I have done aught to offend her
that she should so often pick up my words, and berate me for a meaning
they never had."
"You see, things have changed since then," Dame Margaret said with a
smile; "'tis two years since you were in Paris, and Katarina, although but
little older than Agnes, is already a young woman. You were then still
under seventeen, now you are nineteen, and in growth and stature well-nigh
a man. You can hardly expect her to be the same with you as when she was
running about Paris in boy's attire, for then you regarded her rather as a
comrade than as a girl. I think, perhaps, it is that she a little resents
the fact that you knew her in that guise, and therefore feels all the less
at her ease with you.
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