question?"

"What is it?"

"Will you obey to the letter the instructions the Company sends?"

"To the letter," he answered. "I am its sworn officer."

"One thing more," I went on: "the parole I gave you, sir, that morning
behind the church, is mine own again when you shall have read those
letters and know the King's will. I am free from that bond, at least."

He looked at me with a frown. "Make not bad worse, Captain Percy," he
said sternly.

I laughed. "It is my aim to make bad better, Sir George. I see through
the window that the Due Return hath come to anchor; I will no longer
trespass on your Honor's time." I bowed myself out, leaving him still
with the frown upon his face, staring at the fire.

Without, the world was bathed in the glow of a magnificent sunset.
Clouds, dark purple and dark crimson, reared themselves in the west to
dizzy heights, and hung threateningly over the darkening land beneath.
In the east loomed more pallid masses, and from the bastions of the east
to the bastions of the west went hurrying, wind-driven cloudless, dark
in the east, red in the west. There was a high wind, and the river,
where it was not reddened by the sunset, was lividly green. "A storm,
too!" I muttered.

As I passed the guest house, there came to me from within a burst of
loud and vaunting laughter and a boisterous drinking catch sung by many
voices; and I knew that my lord drank, and gave others to drink, to the
orders which the Due Return should bring. The minister's house was
in darkness. In the great room I struck a light and fired the fresh
torches, and found I was not its sole occupant. On the hearth, the ashes
of the dead fire touching her skirts, sat Mistress Jocelyn Percy, her
arms resting upon a low stool, and her head pillowed upon them. Her face
was not hidden: it was cold and pure and still, like carven marble. I
stood and gazed at her a moment; then, as she did not offer to move, I
brought wood to the fire and made the forlorn room bright again.

"Where is Rolfe?" I asked at last.

"He would have stayed," she answered, "but I made him go. I wished to
be alone." She rose, and going to the window leaned her forehead against
the bars, and looked out upon the wild sky and the hurrying river. "I
would I were alone," she said in a low voice and with a catch of her
breath. As she stood there in the twilight by the window, I knew that
she was weeping, though her pride strove to keep that knowledge from me.