not, 'twill serve, and if she passes will have won me what I long
for--for it is _longing_, this. I know it now, and own it to myself."

And see her he did, but as is ever the case when a man has planned a
thing, it befell as he had not thought of its happening--and 'twas over
in a flash.

Down one of the wet lanes he had turned and was riding slowly when he
heard suddenly behind him a horse coming at such a sharp gallop that
he wheeled his own beast aside, the way being dangerously narrow, that
so tempestuous a rider might tear by in safety. And as he turned and
was half screened by the bushes, the rider swept past him splashing
through the mire and rain-pools so that the muddy water flew up beneath
the horses' hoofs--and 'twas the object of his thoughts herself!

She rode her tall young horse and was not clad as he had before beheld
her, but in rich riding-coat and hat and sweeping feather. No maid of
honour of her Majesty Queen Anne's rode attired more fittingly, none
certainly with such a seat and spirit, and none, Heaven knew, looked
like her.

These things he marked in a flash, not knowing he had marked them until
afterwards, so strong and moving was his sudden feeling that in her
nature at that moment there worked some strange new thing--some mood
new to herself and angering her. Her brows were bent, her eyes were set
and black with shadow. She bit her full lip as she rode, and her horse
went like the wind. For but a moment she was through the lane and
clattering on the road.

My lord Duke was breathing fast and bit his own lip, but the next
second broke into a laugh, turning his horse, whose bridle he had
caught up with a sudden gesture.

"Nay," he said, "a man cannot gallop after a lady without ceremony, and
command her to stand and deliver as if he were a highwayman. Yet I was
within an ace of doing it--within an ace. I have beheld her! I had best
ride back to Dunstan's Wolde."

And so he did, at a hot pace; but if he had chanced to turn on the top
of the hill he might have seen below him in a lane to the right that
two rode together, and one was she whom he had but just seen, her
companion a horseman who had leapt a gate in a field and joined her,
with flushed cheeks and wooing eyes, though she had frowned--and 'twas
the town rake and beauty, Sir John Oxon.

_CHAPTER XVI_

_A Rumour_

Through the passing of two years Osmonde's foot did not press English
soil again, and his existence duri