He was young, but three-and-twenty that day, and his simple dress, a tunic of thick wool fastened round him with a leathern belt, to which hung a short sword, showed that his degree was modest.
The girl, although she seemed his elder, in fact was only in her twentieth year.

Yet from her who had been reared in the hard school of that cruel age childhood had long departed, leaving her a ripened woman before her time.
This pair stood looking at each other.
"Well, Cousin Eve Clavering," said the man, in his clear voice, "why did your message bid me meet you in this cold place ?" "Because I had a word to say to you, Cousin Hugh de Cressi," she answered boldly; "and the marsh being so cold and so lonesome I thought it suited to my purpose.

Does Grey Dick watch yonder ?" "Ay, behind those willows, arrow on string, and God help him on whom Dick draws! But what was that word, Eve ?" "One easy to understand," she replied, looking him in the eyes--"Farewell!" He shivered as though with the cold, and his face changed.
"An ill birthday greeting, yet I feared it," he muttered huskily, "but why more now than at any other time ?" "Would you know, Hugh?
Well, the story is short, so I'll let it out.

Our great-grandmother, the heiress of the de Cheneys, married twice, did she not, and from the first husband came the de Cressis, and from the second the Claverings.

But in this way or in that we Claverings got the lands, or most of them, and you de Cressis, the nobler stock, took to merchandise.