"Cynthia, you mock me," he cried angrily.

"Now, Heaven forbid! I do but mark the change," she answered airily.
"These scented clothes are but a masquerade, even as your coat of black
and your cant were a masquerade. Then you simulated godliness; now
you simulate Heaven knows what. But now, as then, it is no more than a
simulation, a pretence of something that you are not."

He left her in a pet, and went in search of Gregory, into whose ear
he poured the story of his woes that had their source in Cynthia's
unkindness. From this resulted a stormy interview 'twixt Cynthia and her
father, in which Cynthia at last declared that she would not be wedded
to a fop.

Gregory shrugged his shoulders and laughed cynically, replying that it
was the way of young men to be fools, and that through folly lay the
road to wisdom.

"Be that as it may," she answered him with spirit, "this folly
transcends all bounds. Master Stewart may return to his Scottish
heather; at Castle Marleigh he is wasting time."

"Cynthia!" he cried.

"Father," she pleaded, "why be angry? You would not have me marry
against the inclinations of my heart? You would not have me wedded to a
man whom I despise?"

"By what right do you despise him?" he demanded, his brow dark.

"By the right of the freedom of my thoughts--the only freedom that a
woman knows. For the rest it seems she is but a chattel; of no more
consideration to a man than his ox or his ass with which the Scriptures
rank her--a thing to be given or taken, bought or sold, as others shall
decree."

"Child, child, what know you of these things?" he cried. "You are
overwrought, sweetheart." And with the promise to wait until a calmer
frame of mind in her should be more propitious to what he wished to say
further on this score, he left her.

She went out of doors in quest of solitude among the naked trees of
the park; instead she found Sir Crispin, seated deep in thought upon a
fallen trunk.

Through the trees she espied him as she approached, whilst the rustle
of her gown announced to him her coming. He rose as she drew nigh, and,
doffing his hat, made shift to pass on.

"Sir Crispin," she called, detaining him. He turned.

"Your servant, Mistress Cynthia."

"Are you afraid of me, Sir Crispin?"

"Beauty, madam, is wont to inspire courage rather than fear," he
answered, with a smile.

"That, sir, is an evasion, not an answer."

"If read aright, Mistress Cynthia, it is also an answer