, she felt as
if she were gliding between fire and ice.

"One side of me was frozen, and the other done to a crisp." She
lifted her hand commandingly.

"We will have no bickering here," she protested. Evander paid her a
salutation, and, moving a little aside, resumed his book. He would
not retire while Sir Blaise was in presence, but he guessed that the
lady wished for speech with her friend. Sir Blaise did not find her
words consolatory, though she affected consolation.

"The bear licks with a rough tongue," she whispered. Sir Blaise
slapped his palms together.

"You shall see me ring him, you shall see me bait him, if you will
but leave us."

"How shall I see if I leave?" Brilliana asked, provokingly. "But 'tis
no matter."

As she spoke she thought of Halfman, and a merry scheme danced in her
head.

"Gentles, I must leave you," she cried, with a pretty little
reverence that included both men. Then in a moment she had slipped
out of the pleasaunce and was running down the avenue. In the house
she found Halfman. "Quick!" she cried, breathlessly. "Sir Blaise and
Mr. Cloud are wrangling yonder like dogs over a bone."

"Do you wish me to keep the peace between them?" Halfman questioned.
Brilliana did not exactly know what she wished. She was fretted at
the poor show a King's man had made before a Puritan; if Sir Blaise
could do something to humble the Puritan it might not be wholly
amiss. So much Halfman gathered from her jerky scraps of sentences;
also, that on no account must the disputants be permitted to come to
swords. Halfman nodded, caught up a staff, and ran full tilt to the
pleasaunce. The moment his back was turned Brilliana, instead of
remaining in the house, came out again, doubled on her course, and
dodging among the hedges found herself peeping unseen upon the
enclosure she had just quitted and the brawl at its height.

XX

SIR BLAISE PAYS HIS PENALTY

When Brilliana quitted them the two men had regarded each other
steadily for a few seconds in silence. Then Sir Blaise spoke.

"You made merry with me just now in ease and safety, a lady being
by."

Evander shrugged his shoulders.

"Had no lady been by I should have been more merry and less tender."

Sir Blaise scowled.

"I am ill to provoke, my master. Those quarrels end sadly that are
quarrels picked with me."

Again Evander shrugged his shoulders.

"I pick no quarrel, sir. You asked me very straightly what I knew of
Sir Bla