to perform their duty or quit their office."

Lionel drew a sharp breath, and with dilating eyes regarded the mariner,
but made him no answer.

Jasper laid a long finger against his nose and his eyes grew cunning. "I
thought I'd warn you, sir, so as you may bid Sir Oliver look to hisself.
'Tis a fine seaman and fine seamen be none so plentiful."

Lionel drew his purse from his pocket and without so much as looking
into its contents dropped it into the seaman's ready hand, with a
muttered word of thanks.

He rode home in terror almost. It was come. The blow was about to fall,
and his brother would at last be forced to speak. At Penarrow a fresh
shock awaited him. He learnt from old Nicholas that Sir Oliver was from
home, that he had ridden over to Godolphin Court.

The instant conclusion prompted by Lionel's terror was that already the
news had reached Sir Oliver and that he had instantly taken action; for
he could not conceive that his brother should go to Godolphin Court upon
any other business.

But his fears on that score were very idle. Sir Oliver, unable longer
to endure the present state of things, had ridden over to lay before
Rosamund that proof with which he had taken care to furnish himself.
He could do so at last without any fear of hurting Lionel. His journey,
however, had been entirely fruitless. She had refused point-blank to
receive him, and for all that with a humility entirely foreign to him he
had induced a servant to return to her with a most urgent message, yet
he had been denied. He returned stricken to Penarrow, there to find his
brother awaiting him in a passion of impatience.

"Well?" Lionel greeted him. "What will you do now?"

Sir Oliver looked at him from under brows that scowled darkly in
reflection of his thoughts.

"Do now? Of what do you talk?" quoth he.

"Have you not heard?" And Lionel told him the news.

Sir Oliver stared long at him when he had done, then his lips tightened
and he smote his brow.

"So!" he cried. "Would that be why she refused to see me? Did she
conceive that I went perhaps to plead? Could she think that? Could she?"

He crossed to the fireplace and stirred the logs with his boot angrily.
"Oh! 'Twere too unworthy. Yet of a certainty 'tis her doing, this."

"What shall you do?" insisted Lionel, unable to repress the question
that was uppermost in his mind; and his voice shook.

"Do?" Sir Oliver looked at him over his shoulder. "Prick this bubble,
by he