ll, of those works in prose and verse
which Sir Philip has left behind. Sure, these will never die, and will
tell those who come after us what we possessed and lost!

'Yet, after all, as my mistress saith again and yet again, it was not by
all his deeds of valour and his gifts of learning that he stands so high
forever amongst men. No, nor not by his death and the selfless act which
men are speaking of on all sides, as he lay in the first agony of his sore
wound on the battlefield of Zutphen. Not by these only will his name live,
but by his life, which, for purity and faith, virtue and godliness, loyalty
and truth, may be said to be without peer in this age of which he was so
fair an ornament.

'I dare not say more, lest even you charge me with rhapsody.

'I rest, dear Mary, in all loving and tender affection, your sister,

LUCY FORRESTER.

'To my honoured sister, Mary Gifford, at the house of Master Gifford, in
Arnhem, February 1586. From Penshurst Place, in the county of Kent.'

CHAPTER XVI

FOUR YEARS LATER--1590

'My true love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a better bargain driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his, because in me it bides.'

The sound of these words by Sir Philip Sidney, sung in a sweet melodious
voice, was borne upon the summer air of a fair June evening in the year
1590.

It came through the open casement from the raised seat of the parlour at
Hillbrow, where once Mistress Ratcliffe had sat at her spinning-wheel,
casting her watchful eyes from time to time upon the square of turf lying
between the house and the entrance gate, lest any of her maidens should be
gossiping instead of working.

Mistress Ratcliffe had spun her last thread of flax more than a year ago,
and another mistress reigned in her place in the old house upon the crest
of the hill above Penshurst.

As the last words of the song were sung, and only the lingering chords of
the viol were heard, making a low, sweet refrain, a man who had been
listening unseen to the music under the porch, with its heavy overhanging
shield of carved stone, now came to the open window, which, though raised
some feet above the terrace walk beneath, was not so high but that