lout him, as is the way of your sex when
you behold a man your utter slave. From this--being all unversed in
the obliquity of woman--he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer finds
favour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that in the
world he values, he behaves foolishly. You flout him anew, and because
of it. He is as jealous with you as a hen with her brood."

"Jealous?" echoed Cynthia.

"Why, yes, jealous; and so far does he go as to be jealous even of me,"
he cried, with infinitely derisive relish. "Think of it--he is jealous
of me! Jealous of him they call the Tavern Knight!"

She did think of it as he bade her. And by thinking she stumbled upon a
discovery that left her breathless.

Strange how we may bear a sentiment in our hearts without so much as
suspecting its existence, until suddenly a chance word shall so urge it
into life that it reveals itself with unmistakable distinctness. With
her the revelation began in a vague wonder at the scorn with which
Crispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousy
on his score. Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Then
in a flash the answer came--and it was, that far from being a matter for
derision, such an attitude in Kenneth lacked not for foundation.

In that moment she knew that it was because of Crispin; because of this
man who spoke with such very scorn of self, that Kenneth had become in
her eyes so mean and unworthy a creature. Loved him she haply never had,
but leastways she had tolerated--been even flattered by--his wooing.
By contrasting him now with Crispin she had grown to despise him. His
weakness, his pusillanimity, his meannesses of soul, stood out in sharp
relief by contrast with the masterful strength and the high spirit of
Sir Crispin.

So easily may our ideals change that the very graces of face and form
that a while ago had pleased her in Kenneth, seemed now effeminate
attributes, well-attuned to a vacillating, purposeless mind. Far greater
beauty did her eyes behold in this grimfaced soldier of fortune; the
man as firm of purpose as he was upright of carriage; gloomy, proud, and
reckless; still young, yet past the callow age of adolescence. Since
the day of his coming to Castle Marleigh she had brought herself to look
upon him as a hero stepped from the romancers' tales that in secret she
had read. The mystery that seemed to envelop him; those hints at a past
that was not good--but the measu