. And so, my Lord of Scarthey, I will retire to my
apartments; my Lady in Waiting I see yonder is ready for me."

With a quaint mixture of playfulness and gravity, she extended her
hand, and Adrian stooped and kissed it--as he had kissed fair Cecile
de Savenaye's rosy finger-tip upon the porch of Pulwick, twenty years
before.

CHAPTER VII

FOREBODINGS OF GLADNESS

Molly de Savenaye in her improvised bedroom, wet as she was, could
hardly betake herself to disrobing, so amused was she in surveying the
fresh and romantic oddity of her surroundings, with their mixture of
barbarous rudeness and almost womanish refinement.

Old Margery's fumbling hands were not nimble either, and it was long
since she had acted as attendant upon one of her own sex. And so the
matter progressed but slowly; but the speed of Margery's tongue was
apparently not affected by its length of service. It wagged
ceaselessly; the girl between her own moods of curious speculation
vouchsafing an amused, half-contemptuous ear.

Presently, however, as the nurse's reminiscences wandered from the
less interesting topic of her own vicissitudes, the children she had
reared or buried, and the marvellous ailments she had endured, to an
account of those days when she had served the French Madam and her
babes, Molly, slowly peeling a clinging sleeve from her arm, turned a
more eager and attentive face to her.

"Ah," quoth Margery, appraising her with blear eyes, "it's a queer
thing how ye favour your mother, miss. She had just they beautiful
shoulders and arms, as firm an' as white; but you're taller, I think,
and may be so, to speak, a stouter make altogether. Eh, dear, you were
always a fine child and the poor lady set a deal of store on you, she
did. She took you with her and left your sister with my Sally, when
she was trapesing up to London and back with Mester Adrian, ay, and me
with ye. And many the day that I wished myself safe at Pulwick! And I
mind the day she took leave of you, I do that, well."

Here Dame Margery paused and shook her head solemnly, then pursued in
another key:

"See now, miss, dear, just step out of they wet things, will ye now,
and let me put this hot sheet round ye?"

"But I want to hear about myself," said Molly, gratefully wrapping the
hot linen round her young beauty, and beginning to rub her black locks
energetically. "Where was it my mother parted from me?"

"Why, I'll tell you, miss. When Madam--we allus use