w since their first
meeting; for he had availed himself to the full of Cromwell's
encouragement to make himself at home at Chelsea; and he found that his
interest in her deepened every time. With a touch of amusement he found
himself studying Horace and Terence again, not only for Sir Thomas
More's benefit, but in order to win his approval and his good report to
his household, among whom Beatrice was practically to be reckoned.

He was pleased too by More's account of Beatrice.

"She is nearly as good a scholar as my dear Meg," he had said one day.
"Try her, Mr. Torridon."

Ralph had carefully prepared an apt quotation that day, and fired it off
presently, not at Beatrice, but, as it were, across her; but there was
not the faintest response or the quiver of an eyelid.

There was silence a moment; and then Sir Thomas burst out--

"You need not look so demure, my child; we all know that you
understand."

Beatrice had given him a look of tranquil amusement in return.

"I will not be made a show of," she said.

Ralph went away that day more engrossed than ever. He began to ask
himself where his interest in her would end; and wondered at its
intensity.

As he questioned himself about it, it seemed that to him it was to a
great extent her appearance of detached self-possession that attracted
him. It was the quality that he most desired for himself, and one which
he had in measure attained; but he was aware that in the presence of
Cromwell at least it deserted him. He knew well that he had found his
master there, and that he himself was nothing more than a
hero-worshipper before a shrine; but it provoked him to feel that there
was no one who seemed to occupy the place of a similar divinity with
regard to this girl. Obviously she admired and loved Sir Thomas
More--Ralph soon found out how deeply in the course of his visits--but
she was not in the least afraid of her friend. She serenely contradicted
him when she disagreed with what he said, would fail to keep her
appointments at his house with the same equanimity, and in spite of Sir
Thomas's personality never appeared to give him more than a friendly and
affectionate homage. With regard to Ralph himself, it was the same. She
was not in the least awed by him, or apparently impressed by his
reputation which at this time was growing rapidly as that of a capable
and daring agent of Cromwell's; and even once or twice when he
condescended to hint at the vastness of the af