however, it troubled
him but little; enough preoccupation did he find in Cynthia's daily
increasing coldness. Upon all the fine speeches that he made her she
turned an idle ear, or if she replied at all it was but petulantly to
interrupt them, to call him a man of great words and small deeds. All
that he did she found ill done, and told him of it. His sober, godly
garments of sombre hue afforded her the first weapon of scorn wherewith
to wound him. A crow, she dubbed him; a canting, psalm-chanting
hypocrite; a Scripture-monger, and every other contumelious epithet of
like import that she should call to mind. He heard her in amazement.

"Is it for you, Cynthia," he cried out in his surprise, "the child of a
God-fearing house, to mock the outward symbols of my faith?"

"A faith," she laughed, "that is all outward symbols and naught besides;
all texts and mournings and nose-twangings."

"Cynthia!" he exclaimed, in horror.

"Go your ways, sir," she answered, half in jest, half in earnest. "What
need hath a true faith of outward symbols? It is a matter that lies
between your God and yourself, and it is your heart He will look at,
not your coat. Why, then, without becoming more acceptable in His eyes,
shall you but render yourself unsightly in the eyes of man?"

Kenneth's cheeks were flushed with anger. From the terrace where they
walked he let his glance roam towards the avenue that split the park in
twain. Up this at that moment, with the least suspicion of a swagger
in his gait, Sir Crispin Galliard was approaching leisurely; he wore a
claret-coloured doublet edged with silver lace, and a grey hat decked
with a drooping red feather--which garments, together with the rest
of his apparel, he had drawn from the wardrobe of Gregory Ashburn.
His advent afforded Kenneth the retort he needed. Pointing him out to
Cynthia:

"Would you rather," he cried hotly, "have me such a man as that?"

"And, pray, why not?" she taunted him. "Leastways, you would then be a
man."

"If, madam, a debauchee, a drunkard, a profligate, a brawler be your
conception of a man, I would in faith you did not account me one."

"And what, sir, would you sooner elect to be accounted?"

"A gentleman, madam," he answered pompously.

"I think," said she quietly, "that you are in as little danger of
becoming the one as the other. A gentleman does not slander a man behind
his back, particularly when he owes that man his life. Kenneth, I am
ashamed of y