with such warmth as at once put me to
torture, and aroused that spirit of defence of her against myself
which hath been the noblest thing in my poor life.

So I left them, Mistress Catherine at the flax-wheel, and Mary out
in the garden with Sir Humphrey, gathering roses for the potpourri
jars, and the distilling into rosewater, for little idleness was
permitted at Drake Hill even after a ball. I got my horse, but as I
started forth Madam Cavendish called--a stiffly resolute old
figure standing in the great doorway, and I dismounted and went to
her, leading my horse, which I had great ado to keep from nibbling
the blossoms of a rose tree which grew over the porch. "Harry," she
said in a whisper, "where is Mary?"

"In the garden with Sir Humphrey Hyde," I answered.

Then Madam Cavendish frowned. "And why is she not at her lessons?"
she asked sternly.

"The lessons are set for the afternoon, and this morning she is
gathering rose leaves, Madam," I answered; but that Madam Cavendish
knew as well as I, having in truth so ordered the hours of the
lessons.

"But," she said, hesitating, then she stopped, and looked at me with
an angry indecision, and then at the garden, where the top of Mary's
golden head was just visible above the pink mist of the roses, and
Sir Humphrey's fair one bending over it. "Harry," she said,
frowning, and yet with a piteous sort of appeal. "Why do you not go
out into the garden and help to gather the rose leaves?" Then,
before I could answer, as if angry with herself at her own folly,
she called out to Mary's little black maid, Sukey, to bid her
mistress come in from the garden and spin. But before the maid
started I said low in Madam Cavendish's ear: "Madam, think you not
that the sweet air of the garden is better for her after the ball,
than the hot ball and the labour at the wheel?" And she gave one
look at me, and called out to Sukey that she need not speak to her
mistress, and went inside to her own work and left me to go my way.
I was relieved in my mind that she did not ask me whither, since, if
she had, I should have been driven to one of those broadsides of
falsehood in a good cause for which I regret the necessity, but
admit it, and if it be to my soul's hurt, I care not, so long as I
save the other party by it.

I was bound for Barry Upper Branch, and rode thither as fast as I
could, for I contemplated asking the Barry brothers to aid me in the
removal of Mistress Mary's contraban