n players."

Brilliana lifted her face from the book, and there was a look of
astonishment and even of pain upon it.

"Oh, that is quite another matter," she said, quickly. "That could
never come to pass."

Evander's Puritanism, recalled to recollection of itself, felt
compelled to assent.

"I trust not," he said, gravely. He was looking at Brilliana with
eyes that were honestly admiring. She rose from her seat.

"I must dismiss you now," she said, "for I have much to do ere
dinner. You will dine with me, I pray."

Evander made her a not uncourtly bow.

"If I be not unwelcome," he suggested.

Brilliana shook her head very positively.

"We are pledged friends for the time, and friends love to break bread
together."

There was no countering this argument. Evander took up the folio and
made its owner another bow.

"I will attend you at the dinner-hour," he said. "This treasure I
restore to its home."

As the Parliament man moved away across the grass, his image very
dark against its green, Brilliana looked after him, nursing her chin
in her palm and her elbow on her knee. As he entered the house with
the big book under his arm she took out her pretty handkerchief, and
with much deliberation tied a small knot in one corner of it.

"Master Puritan, Master Puritan," she murmured, "I must tie a knot in
my handkerchief to remind me that you and I are enemies."

XXII

MASTER PAUL AND MASTER PETER

At the dinner-hour Halfman came for Evander, where he sat in the
library, and told him that Lady Brilliana awaited him. The meal was
served in the banqueting-hall, a splendid, panelled room with
deep-embrasured windows, from which the defences had now been removed
and through which the inmates could have noble views of the lawns and
gardens beyond the moat. The little company of three seemed, as it
were, lost in the vastness of the chamber as they sat at meat
together at the oak table by the hearth at one end of the room,
Brilliana at the head, with Halfman at her right and Evander at her
left as the guest and stranger. It proved a vastly pleasant meal to
Evander, for the talk was brisk and entertaining, and there was no
allusion made to those civil and religious differences which in
distracting the country had their curious effect, so unimportant to
the country, so important to themselves, of bringing that oddly
assorted trio together. Brilliana gave a gracious equality of
attention to her companions; sh