id. "He will divert me for want of a better."

Back ran Tiffany to where the visitor lingered, bade him enter the
pleasaunce, where he would find her mistress, and having delivered
her errand, ran again to the house, leaving him to his adventure.

XIX

SIR BLAISE PAYS HIS RESPECTS

Sir Blaise Mickleton was, in his own eyes and in the eyes of the
village girls of Harby, a vastly fine gentleman. If they had ever
heard of the sun-god, Phoebus Apollo would have presented himself
to their rusticity in some such guise as the personality of the local
knight. Sir Blaise had been to London--once--had kissed the King's
hand at Whitehall, and had ever since striven vehemently to be more
Londonish than the Londoner. He talked with what he thought to be the
town's drawl; he walked, as he believed, with the town walk over the
grasses of his grounds and on the Harby high-roads. He plagued the
village tailor with strange devices for coats and cloaks;
many-colored as a Joseph, he strutted through bucolic surroundings as
if he carried the top-knot of the mode in the Mall; he glittered in
ribbons and trinkets, floundered rather than swam in a sea of
essences, yet scarcely succeeded in amending, with all this false
foppishness, the something bumpkin that was at the root of his
nature. He was of a lusty natural with the sanguine disposition, and
held himself as much above the most of his neighbors as he knew
himself to be below the house of Harby. He was no double-face,
friendly with both sides; he was rather for peeping from behind the
parted doors of the temple of peace upon a warring world without, and
making fast friends with the victor. He had very little doubt that
the victor would be the King, but just enough doubt to permit his
surrender to a distemper that kept him to his bed till Edgehill
proved the amazing remedy.

Sir Blaise peacocked over the lawn, delicate as Agag. He murdered the
morning air with odors, his raiment outglowed the rainbow; one hand
dandled his staff, the other caressed his mustaches. He strove to
smile adoration on Brilliana, but mistrust marred his ogle, and a
shiver of fear betrayed his simper of confidence. Brilliana watched
him gravely with never a word or a sign, and her silence intensified
his discomfiture by the square of the distance he had yet to
traverse.

"Coxcomb," she thought, and "coward," she thought, and "cur," she
thought.

He could not read her thought, but he could read her