But often Mistress Marian would come and sit against my knee, even as
thou art sitting now, sweetheart, and ask me to stroke her hair, and
when she would coax Lord Ernle's big blood-hound "Valor" to come and lie
beside her, she would sit more quiet, almost as though she were asleep.
And she would ask me ever and again, "Nurse, wherefore are women at any
time born with dark hair, to mar ev'n such small comeliness as they
might otherwise have?"

And always I would answer, "Tut! thou knowest not of what thou speakest,
my honey; in the sight o' some, dark hair is more comely than fair
hair." And always she would shake her head, and smile i' th' fashion o'
one who knows better than another. But she was a wondrous fair woman, in
spite o' her own thinking, and shaped like the brown metal wench over
yonder with the bow and arrows. Diana, say ye? Why, even so; so it was
that his lordship called her when he did not call her "comrade."

Now young Sir Rowland Nasmyth (him who was father to that Sir Rowland
who wedded your sister the Lady Anne last Michaelmas, ye mind, dears),
he would be often over for a day, or maybe several days, at the castle;
and all four would ride a-hawking, or ramble together, two by two,
through the park; or Lord Ernle and Sir Rowland would play at rackets,
and i' fecks 'twas a sight to see 'em at it! One day my little lady and
Sir Rowland (who was a fair stripling, with curls near the color o'
Mistress Marian's, and eyes the tinting o' the far sea on a rainy day)
did wander off together, and Mistress Marian and my lord were left
alone, seated on a rude bench under one o' th' great beech-trees that
flank the hall door. He leaned forward and rested an elbow on either
knee, and did let his racket swing back and forth between them, and sat
looking down on it. Mistress Marian's gaze was upon him, but her big hat
made so deep a shadow o'er her eyes withal that I could not note them
clearly. So stayed they for some moments.

Then all in a breath did Lord Ernle start erect and push back his heavy
locks and speak. "Comrade," saith he, "wilt thou call me an ass for my
pains, I wonder, an I tell thee o' something that is troubling me
sorely?"

She, having in no wise moved from her first position, and her eyes still
in shadow, saith, "I pray thee say on, Ernle, for such words as thou
hast just spoken to me are idle."

And he leaned forward and took one of her long brown hands in his, but
'twas different from the