une in England--and all the world is besieging her;
but Jack hath come and bowed sighing before her, and writ some verses,
and borne her off from them all."

"'Tis time," said Clorinda, "that he should marry some woman who can pay
his debts and keep him out of the spunging house, for to that he will
come if he does not play his cards with skill."

Sir Jeoffry looked at her askance and rubbed his red chin.

"I wish thou hadst liked him, Clo," he said, "and ye had both had
fortunes to match. I love the fellow, and ye would have made a handsome
pair."

Mistress Clorinda laughed, sitting straight in her saddle, her fine eyes
unblenching, though the sun struck them.

"We had fortunes to match," she said--"I was a beggar and he was a
spendthrift. Here comes Lord Dunstanwolde."

And as the gentleman rode near, it seemed to his dazzled eyes that the
sun so shone down upon her because she was a goddess and drew it from the
heavens.

In the west wing of the Hall 'twas talked of between Mistress Wimpole and
her charges, that a rumour of Sir John Oxon's marriage was afloat.

"Yet can I not believe it," said Mistress Margery; "for if ever a
gentleman was deep in love, though he bitterly strove to hide it, 'twas
Sir John, and with Mistress Clorinda."

"But she," faltered Anne, looking pale and even agitated--"she was always
disdainful to him and held him at arm's length. I--I wished she would
have treated him more kindly."

"'Tis not her way to treat men kindly," said Mistress Wimpole.

But whether the rumour was true or false--and there were those who
bestowed no credit upon it, and said it was mere town talk, and that the
same things had been bruited abroad before--it so chanced that Sir John
paid no visit to his relative or to Sir Jeoffry for several months. 'Twas
heard once that he had gone to France, and at the French Court was making
as great a figure as he had made at the English one, but of this even his
kinsman Lord Eldershawe could speak no more certainly than he could of
the first matter.

The suit of my Lord of Dunstanwolde--if suit it was--during these months
appeared to advance somewhat. All orders of surmises were made
concerning it--that Mistress Clorinda had privately quarrelled with Sir
John and sent him packing; that he had tired of his love-making, as 'twas
well known he had done many times before, and having squandered his
possessions and finding himself in open straits, must needs patch up his