ou."

"I do not slander," he insisted hotly. "You yourself know of the drunken
excess wherewith three nights ago he celebrated his coming to Castle
Marleigh. Nor do I forget what I owe him, and payment is to be made in
a manner you little know of. If I said of him what I did, it was but in
answer to your taunts. Think you I could endure comparison with such a
man as that? Know you what name the Royalists give him? They call him
the Tavern Knight."

She looked him over with an eye of quiet scorn.

"And how, sir, do they call you? The pulpit knight? Or is it the knight
of the white feather? Mr. Stewart, you weary me. I would have a man who
with a man's failings hath also a man's redeeming virtues of honesty,
chivalry, and courage, and a record of brave deeds, rather than one who
has nothing of the man save the coat--that outward symbol you lay such
store by."

His handsome, weak face was red with fury.

"Since that is so, madam," he choked, "I leave you to your swaggering,
ruffling Cavalier."

And, without so much as a bow, he swung round on his heel and left her.
It was her turn to grow angry now, and well it was for him that he had
not tarried. She dwelt with scorn upon his parting taunt, bethinking
herself that in truth she had exaggerated her opinions of Galliard's
merits. Her feelings towards that ungodly gentleman were rather of pity
than aught else. A brave, ready-witted man she knew him for, as much
from the story of his escape from Worcester as for the air that clung
to him despite his swagger, and she deplored that one possessing these
ennobling virtues should have fallen notwithstanding upon such evil ways
as those which Crispin trod. Some day, perchance, when she should come
to be better acquainted with him, she would seek to induce him to mend
his course.

Such root did this thought take in her mind that soon thereafter--and
without having waited for that riper acquaintance which at first she had
held necessary--she sought to lead their talk into the channels of this
delicate subject. But he as sedulously confined it to trivial matter
whenever she approached him in this mood, fencing himself about with a
wall of cold reserve that was not lightly to be overthrown. In this
his conscience was at work. Cynthia was the flaw in the satisfaction he
might have drawn from the contemplation of the vengeance he was there to
wreak. He beheld her so pure, so sweet and fresh, that he marvelled how
she came to be t