--thee was in Devon--one of the women was taken ill. They sent
for me because the woman asked it. She was a Papist; but she begged that
I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send
to Heddington for a nurse. She had seen me once in the house of the
toll-gate keeper. Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went
in the Earl's carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was--she said she
felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun's. It was then I saw
the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot."

"In the Earl's carriage indeed--and the Earl?"

"He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles,
and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul."

"He means to make Hamley his home? From Ireland these furnishings come?"

"So it seems. Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung
wide. London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes
of Hamley."

"Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved
Irish peer."

"He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow. He bids for fame
and fortune, Davy."

"'Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a
cotton vest."

"The world sees only the broadcloth coat. For the rest--"

"For the rest, Faith?"

"They see the man's face, and--"

His eyes were embarrassed. A thought had flashed into his mind which he
considered unworthy, for this girl beside him was little likely to dwell
upon the face of a renegade peer, whose living among them was a constant
reminder of his father's apostasy. She was too fine, dwelt in such high
spheres, that he could not think of her being touched by the glittering
adventures of this daring young member of Parliament, whose book of
travels had been published, only to herald his understood determination
to have office in the Government, not in due time, but in his own time.
What could there be in common between the sophisticated Eglington and
this sweet, primitively wholesome Quaker girl?

Faith read what was passing in his mind. She flushed--slowly flushed
until her face--and eyes were one soft glow, then she laid a hand upon
his arm and said: "Davy, I feel the truth about him--no more. Nothing of
him is for thee or me. His ways are not our ways." She paused, and then
said solemnly: "He hath a devil. That I feel. But he hath also a mind,
and a cruel will. He will hew a path, or make others hew it fo