with
her tasks. When I entered the hall, having been to Jamestown after
breakfast and just returned, both maids looked up, and suddenly one
of the wheels ceased its part in the duet, and Catherine was on her
feet and her thread fallen whither it would. "Master Wingfield,"
said she, "I would speak with you."

"Madam, at your service," said I, and followed her, leading out on
the green before the house. "What means this, what means this, sir?"
she began when she was scarcely out of hearing of her sister.

"What did you about the goods? Did you, did you--?"

She gasped for further speech, and looked at me with such a
haughtiness of scorn as never I had seen. It is hard for any man to
be attacked in such wise by a woman, and be under the necessity of
keeping his weapons sheathed, though he knoweth full well the
exceeding convincing of them and their fine point to the case in
hand. I bowed.

"Did you, did you--" she went on--"did you purchase those
goods yourself for my sister? Did you?"

I bowed again. "Madam," said I, "whatever I have, and my poor flesh
and blood and soul also, are at the service of not only your sister
but her family."

I marvelled much as I spoke thus to see no flush of shameful
consciousness overspread the maid's face, but none did, and she
continued speaking with that sharpness of hers, both as to pale look
and voice, which wounded like cold steel, which leaves an additional
sting because of the frost in it. "Know you not, sir," said she,
"that we cannot suffer a man in your position, a--a--to
purchase my sister's wardrobe?" Then, before I knew what she was
about to do, in went her hand to a broidered pocket which hung at
her girdle, and out she drew a flashing store of rings and brooches,
and one long necklace flashing with green stones. "Here, take
these," she cried out. "I have no money, but such an insult I will
not suffer, that my sister goes clad at your expense to the ball
to-night. Take these; they are five times the value of the goods."

I would in that minute have given ten years of my life had Mistress
Catherine Cavendish been a man and I could have felled her to the
ground, and no man knowing what I believed I knew could have blamed
me. The flashes of red and green from those rings and gewgaws which
she held out seemed to pass my eyes to my very soul.

"Take them," she said. "Why do you not take them, sir?"

"I have no need of jewels, madam," I said, "and whatever the servant