urt.

"The bridesmaids be well-looking," said Lady Enville, behind her fan, to
Sir Piers Feversham, who was her next neighbour,--for Sir Piers and
Lucrece had come to the wedding--"and I do hear Mistress Penelope
Travis--she of them that is nearest--is like to be the next bride of our
vicinage."

"Say you so?" responded Sir Piers. "I do desire all happiness be with
her. But there is one of yonder maids for whom in very deed I feel
compassion, and it is Mistress Lysken Barnevelt. Her May is well-nigh
over, and no bells be ringing for her. Poor maiden!"

"Go to, now, what dolts be men!" quoth Mistress Rachel Enville,
addressing herself, to all appearance, to the dish of flummery which
stood before her. "They think, poor misconceiving companions! that we
be all a-dying for them. That's a man's notion. Moreover, they take it
that 'tis the one end and aim of every woman in the world to be wed.
That's a man's notion, again. And belike they fancy, poor patches! that
when she striketh thirty years on the bell, any woman will wed any man
that will but take compassion to ask her. That caps all their notions.
(Thou shalt right seldom hear a woman to make no such a blunder. They
know better.) Poor blockheads!--as if we could not be useful nor happy
without _them_! Lysken Barnevelt and Rachel Enville, at the least, be
not fools enough to think it."

"Neither is the Queen's Majesty, my mistress," observed Sir Piers,
greatly amused.

"Who e'er said the Queen's Majesty were a fool?" demanded Rachel
bluntly. "She is a woman, and no man--Heaven be praised for all His
mercies!"

"Yet if no man were," pursued Sir Piers, "methinks you gentlewomen
should be but ill bestead."

"Oh, should we so?" retorted Rachel. "Look you, women make no wars, nor
serve therein: nor women be no lawyers, to set folk by the ears: nor
women write not great tomes of controversy, wherein they curse the one
the other because Nell loveth a white gown, and Bess would have a black.
Is the Devil a woman? Answer me that, I pray you."

"Do women make no wars?" laughed Sir Piers. "What! with Helen of Troy,
and--"

"Good lack, my master!--and what ill had Helen's fair face wrought in
all this world, had there been no dolts of men to be beguilen thereby?"
was Rachel's instant response.

Sir Piers made a hasty retreat from that part of the field.

"But, my mistress, though the Devil be no woman, yet was the woman the
first to be deceived by him