the back of the chair. "But that's past
praying," she ended, sighing again most woefully. "Yet I have been of
some service to you."

"I thank you for it most heartily," said I, still stiff and cold.

"And I was very wrong to-day. Simon, it was on her account."

"What?" I cried. "Did Mistress Quinton bid you put your head out and
jest with the fellows on the pavement?"

"She did not bid me; but I did it because she was there."

I looked up at her; it was a rare thing with her, but she would not meet
my glance. I looked down again.

"It was always the same between her and me," murmured Nell. "Ay, so long
ago--even at Hatchstead."

"We're not in Hatchstead now," said I roughly.

"No, nor even in Chelsea. For even in Chelsea you had a kindness for
me."

"I have much kindness for you now."

"Well, then you had more."

"It is in your knowledge why now I have no more."

"Yes, it's in my knowledge!" she cried. "Yet I carried Mistress Quinton
from Dover."

I made no answer to that. She sighed "Heigho," and for a moment there
was silence. But messages pass without words, and there are speechless
Mercuries who carry tidings from heart to heart. Then the air is full
of whisperings, and silence is but foil to a thousand sounds which the
soul hears though the dull corporeal ear be deaf. Did she still amuse
herself, or was there more? Sometimes a part, assumed in play or malice,
so grows on the actor that he cannot, even when he would, throw aside
his trappings and wash from his face the paint which was to show the
passion that he played. The thing takes hold and will not be thrown
aside; it seems to seek revenge for the light assumption and punishes
the bravado that feigned without feeling by a feeling which is not
feint. She was now, for the moment if you will, but yet now, in earnest.
Some wave of recollection or of fancy had come over her and transformed
her jest. She stole round till her face peeped into mine in piteous
bewitching entreaty, asking a sign of fondness, bringing back the past,
raising the dead from my heart's sepulchre. There was a throbbing in my
brain; yet I had need of a cool head. With a spring I was on my feet.

"I'll go and ask if Mistress Barbara sleeps," I stammered. "I fear she
may not be well attended."

"You'll go again? Once scorned, you'll go again, Simon? Well, the maid
will smile; they'll make a story of it among themselves at their supper
in the kitchen."

The laugh of a parcel