e'er
ate yon apple! Yet Master Tremayne will have it that I did eat it mine
own self. Had I so done, Adam might have whistled for a quarter. The
blind, stumbling moles men are! Set a pearl and a pebble afore them,
and my new shoes to an old shoeing-horn, but they shall pick up the
pebble, and courtesy unto you for your grace. And set your mind on a
lad that you do count to have more sense than the rest, and beshrew me
if he show you not in fair colours ere the week be out that he is as
great a dunce as any. I reckon Jack shall be the next. Well, well!--
let the world wag. 'Twill all be o'er an hundred years hence. They
shall be doing it o'er again by then. Howbeit, 'tis ill work to weep
o'er spilt milk."

Sir Piers Feversham and his nephew arrived late that evening. The
former was a little older than Sir Thomas Enville, and had mixed more in
general society;--a talkative, good-natured man, full of anecdote; and
Blanche at least found him very entertaining.

John Feversham, the nephew, was almost the antipodes of his uncle. He
was not handsome, but there was an open, honest look in his grey eyes
which bore the impress of sincerity. All his movements were slow and
deliberate, his manners very quiet and calm, his speech grave and
sedate. Nothing in the shape of repartee could be expected from him;
and with him Blanche was fairly disgusted.

"As sober as a judge, and as heavy as a leaden seal!" said that young
lady,--who had been his next neighbour at the supper-table,--when she
was giving in her report to Clare while they were undressing. "He hath
but an owl's eye for beauty, of whatever fashion. Thou mindest how fair
was the sunset this even? Lo' thou, he could see nought but a deal of
water in the sea, and divers coloured clouds in the sky. Stupid old
companion!"

"And prithee, Mistress Blanche, who ever did see aught in the sea saving
a cruel great parcel of water?"

"Good lack, Bab!--thou art as ill as he. Clare, what seest thou in the
sea?"

Clare tried to bring her thoughts down to the subject.

"I scantly know, Blanche. 'Tis rarely beautiful, in some ways. Yet it
soundeth to me alway very sorrowful."

"Ay so, Mistress Clare!" returned Barbara. "It may belike to thee, poor
sweet heart, whose father was killed thereon,--and to me, that had a
brother which died far away on the Spanish main."

"I suppose," answered Clare sighing, "matters sound unto us according as
we are disposed."