"I have few opportunities of talking apart with Miss Percy, but I am
willing to inform her of the high esteem in which I hold you----"

"Oh dear me no. Her aunt, I fear, does too much of that. Young women
should not be antagonised by being made to feel that their relatives
and friends are too anxious for a match. I fancy they are not unlike
us, the best of them, in that regard. No, what I should like, what
would be of inestimable service in my suit, would be to have you write
a sonnet or madrigal to her in my name, that is to say that I could
sign--which would not be so good as to betray the authorship. As you
know, many men with no pretensions whatever, write odes and sonnets to
their fair ones, but I could not even make a rhyme. She does not know
that, however, and if it were not too fine, yet delicately
flattering--I feel sure that she would be touched."

"By all means, my dear fellow." Warner almost laughed aloud as he
wheeled about and took up a quill. He had no jealousy of Hunsdon, knew
that he would never win Anne Percy; but the irony of inditing a sonnet
to her in the name of another man took away his breath.

He wrote steadily for an hour, copying and polishing, for he was too
great an artist to send forth even an anonymous trifle incomplete in
finish. Lord Hunsdon, who was a young man of excellent parts, took
from the table a copy of the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, and read
diligently until Warner crossed the room and handed him the sonnet.

Hunsdon was enraptured, but Warner refused to be thanked.

"It would be an odd circumstance," he said dryly, "if I could not do
that much for you."

Hunsdon blushed furiously. "Only one thing more could make me the
happiest of men," he cried, with that kindling of the eye that in
other conditions would have developed into a steady fanaticism. "And
when all is well, you must come and live with us. Now that the world
has found you once more I feel that I above all should be held to
account did you despise and forget it again. I shall not even leave
you behind when I return to England. Now, I must run off and copy
this. Remember, you dine with us to-night."

CHAPTER XII

Lord Hunsdon had already bought an album in Charlestown, and after
copying the sonnet several times to practise his chirography, he
inscribed it upon the first page--a pink one--signing it "Your most
obedient Hunsdon," with an austere flourish. Then he carefully wrapped
the album in tissue p