heard Sir Philip telling one of the big
black gowns one day in the Close, when I was sitting up in a tree
overhead, how they had fixed a marriage between his son and his old
friend's daughter, who would have ever so many estates. So I'd give
that"--snapping his fingers--"for your chances of being my Lady
Archfield in the salt mud at Fareham."

"I shall ask Lucy. It is not kind of you, Perry, when you are just
going away."

"Come, come, don't cry, Anne."

"But I knew Charley ever so long first, and--"

"Oh, yes. Maids always like straight, comely, dull fellows, I know
that. But as you can't have Charles Archfield, I mean to have you,
Anne--for I shall look to you as the only one as can ever make a
good man of me! Ay--your mother--I'd wed her if I could, but as I
can't, I mean to have you, Anne Woodford."

"I don't mean to have you! I shall go to Court, and marry some
noble earl or gentleman! Why do you laugh and make that face,
Peregrine? you know my father was almost a knight--"

"Nobody is long with you without knowing that!" retorted Peregrine;
"but a miss is as good as a mile, and you will find the earls and
the lords will think so, and be fain to take the crooked stick at
last!"

Mistress Anne tossed her head--and Peregrine returned a grimace.
Nevertheless they parted with a kiss, and for some time the thought
of Peregrine haunted the little girl with a strange, fateful
feeling, between aversion and attraction, which wore off, as a folly
of her childhood, with her growth in years.

CHAPTER VIII: THE RETURN

"I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in
France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere."

Merchant of Venice.

It was autumn, but in the year 1687, when again Lucy Archfield and
Anne Jacobina Woodford were pacing the broad gravel walk along the
south side of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. Lucy, in spite of
her brocade skirt and handsome gown of blue velvet tucked up over
it, was still devoid of any look of distinction, but was a round-
faced, blooming, cheerful maiden, of that ladylike thoroughly
countrified type happily frequent in English girlhood throughout all
time.

Anne, or Jacobina, as she tried to be called, towered above her
head, and had never lost that tincture of courtly grace that early
breeding had given her, and though her skirt was of gray wool, and
the upper gown of cherry tabinet, she wore both with an air that
made them seem mo