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Besides, she seemed instinctively to know that if she meant to make the best possible bargain for herself in life she must keep herself unblemished must give of her charms but not give too freely. Town gossips might call her a forward piece, as they did; jealousy among girls of her own age might have it that she was flip and fresh; but no one, with truth, might brand her as fast.
At their meeting and parting there was no meaning pressure of the hand; only their glances betrayed the secret understanding of a mighty, burning love: the deep sorrow of the one, and the sweet, tender consolation of the other. Needless to say, the gossips of the garrison were soon busy over such a welcome morsel.
Her father, whom she did not remember, had been a ship-builder, and she knew that he had been a notable man; every one had told her that. "She has met her destiny," say the village gossips, when some man in the dusty procession of life sees a woman's face in the pleasant shadow of a home, and drops out of the ranks to enter at her doorway. Was Ranulph to be Guida's destiny?
The baron had but one child, a daughter; but nature, when she grants but one child, always compensates by making it a prodigy; and so it was with the daughter of the baron. All the nurses, gossips, and country cousins assured her father that she had not her equal for beauty in all Germany; and who should know better than they?
As to what she had met or seen, there were various rumours: some of the shrewder gossips declaring that it was nothing but old Marie Gourdon, the sorceress, who had frightened her by predicting in her mysterious wisdom, which not the shrewdest of them dared altogether disregard, that some strange calamity would attend the life of the child she was about to bring forth; a child that had indeed turned out speechless, and of so sickly a constitution that from year to year one hardly expected her to live.
"Yes," another would interrupt; "if he had a son he'd be sure to leave him the secret of Kidd's treasure." The gossips of the village were to change their tune soon. Dame rumor had been whispering it around for a month that there was something in the wind at Toodleburg's. And, to put it more plainly, it was added that Hanz was soon to be made a happy man by the appearance of a little Toodleburg.
That there was not the slightest foundation for this slander did not lessen its acceptance by a certain class; many claimed that it offered the only plausible solution to the mystery, and must, therefore, be true. It was not long before the echoes of these scandals reached Martha's ears. The gossips dare not affront Miss Jane with their suspicions, but Martha was different.
The four men did return, however, and lived by themselves amid the woods of Saugus, the gossips reporting that a beautiful woman had been seen in their company the mistress of the pirate chief, for, of course, the mysterious quartette had followed the trade of robbery on the high seas.
"That, unfortunately, is usually too well justified by the facts," she replied seriously. "But only the most idiotic and ignorant of gossips could possibly say that of you. Every one who is any one knows that the Kyneston coronet does not want re-gilding."
There were many mothers with babies in arms amongst them; some of them treated the children tenderly, and lifted them cautiously, with a perfectly human care; others, less thoughtful, ran up and down, heedless of the child hanging at their breasts, preoccupied with something, discussing something, and stopping every moment to quarrel with other monkey ladies a true picture of chatty old gossips on a market day, repeated in the animal kingdom.
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