of more
than moderate skill and dared to pit himself against the Tavern Knight,
blood would have been shed in Marleigh Park betwixt them.

It seemed at last as if with his insensate jealousy all the evil
humours that had lain dormant in the boy were brought to the surface,
to overwhelm his erstwhile virtues--if qualities that have bigotry for a
parent may truly be accounted virtues.

He cast off, not abruptly, but piecemeal, those outward symbols--his
sombre clothes. First 'twas his hat he exchanged for a feather-trimmed
beaver of more sightly hue; then those stiff white bands that reeked of
sanctity and cant for a collar of fine point; next it was his coat that
took on a worldly edge of silver lace. And so, little by little, step
by step, was the metamorphosis effected, until by the end of the week
he came forth a very butterfly of fashion--a gallant, dazzling Cavalier.
Out of a stern, forbidding Covenanter he was transformed in a few days
into a most outrageous fop. He walked in an atmosphere of musk that he
himself exhaled; his fair hair--that a while ago had hung so straight
and limp--was now twisted into monstrous curls, a bunch of which were
gathered by his right ear in a ribbon of pale blue silk.

Galliard noted the change in amazement, yet, knowing to what follies
youth is driven when it woos, he accounted Cynthia responsible for it,
and laughed in his sardonic way, whereat the boy would blush and scowl
in one. Gregory, too, looked on and laughed, setting it down to the
same cause. Even Cynthia smiled, whereat the Tavern Knight was driven to
ponder.

With a courtier's raiment Kenneth put on, too, a courtier's ways; he
grew mincing and affected in his speech, and he--whose utterance a while
ago had been marked by a scriptural flavour--now set it off with some of
Galliard's less unseemly oaths.

Since it was a ruffling gallant Cynthia required, he swore that a
ruffling gallant should she find him; nor had he wit enough to see
that his ribbons, his fopperies, and his capers served but to make him
ridiculous in her eyes. He did indeed perceive, however, that in spite
of this wondrous transformation, he made no progress in her favour.

"What signify these fripperies?" she asked him, one day, "any more than
did your coat of decent black? Are these also outward symbols?"

"You may take them for such, madam," he answered sulkily. "You liked me
not as I was--"

"And I like you less as you are," she broke in.