d she. Then her face broke into smiles.
"What liars women are!" she cried. "Yes, I do care; not enough to grow
wrinkled, but enough to wish I hadn't grown half a lady and could----"

"You stop?"

"Could--could--could slap your face, Simon."

"It would be a light infliction after breaking a man's heart," said I,
turning my cheek to her and beckoning with my hand.

"You should have a revenge on my face; not in kind, but in kindness. I
can't strike a man who won't hit back." She laughed at me with all her
old enticing gaiety.

I had almost sealed the bargain; she was so roguish and so pretty. Had
we met first then, it is very likely she would have made the offer, and
very certain that I should have taken it. But there had been other days;
I sighed.

"I loved you too well once to kiss you now, mistress," said I.

"You're mighty strange at times, Simon," said she, sighing also, and
lifting her brows. "Now, I'd as lief kiss a man I had loved as any
other."

"Or slap his face?"

"If I'd never cared to kiss, I'd never care for the other either. You
rise?"

"Why, yes. I have my commission, haven't I?"

"I give you this one also, and yet you keep it?"

"Is that slight not yet forgiven?"

"All is forgiven and all is forgotten--nearly, Simon."

At this instant--and since man is human, woman persistent, and courtesy
imperative, I did not quarrel with the interruption--a sound came from
the room above, strange in a house where Nell lived (if she will pardon
so much candour), but oddly familiar to me. I held up my hand and
listened. Nell's rippling laugh broke in.

"Plague on him!" she cried. "Yes, he's here. Of a truth he's resolute to
convert me, and the fool amuses me."

"Phineas Tate!" I exclaimed, amazed; for beyond doubt his was the voice.
I could tell his intonation of a penitential psalm among a thousand. I
had heard it in no other key.

"You didn't know? Yet that other fool, your servant, is always with him.
They've been closeted together for two hours at a time."

"Psalm-singing?"

"Now and again. They're often quiet too."

"He preaches to you?"

"Only a little; when we chance to meet at the door he gives me a curse
and promises a blessing; no more."

"It's very little to come to Dover for."

"You would have come farther for less of my company once, sir."

It was true, but it did not solve my wonder at the presence of Phineas
Tate. What brought the fellow? Had he too sniffed out something of w