ess a man than her Majesty's
Secretary of State to report to him the death and burial of one Lady
Cantire, an aged servant of her Majesty, and sometime wife to the said
Turlogh."

This was news indeed; and the maiden's face flushed with many mingled
emotions as she heard it.

"Can it be true?" said she. "Sir Poet, tell me briefly what else this
gentleman had to tell of my father?"

"Nay, mistress mine, I can remember little else; for I was thinking not
of his master, but his poetic tooth; not of his defunct mistress, but of
my living muse. Yet, stay, he told me the old man was desolate, his
sons being all established elsewhere, and his one daughter lost. By
which I take it, he spoke of thy celestial self. And strange indeed if
the loss of such a one were not as blindness itself to one who hath
looked in they resplendent face."

"Humphrey," said the maiden, turning from the poet to me, and taking
Jeannette's little hand in hers, "this news means much to me. If it be
true, I must to my father."

A cloud that sweeps over the April sun could scarce have cast the gloom
which did this little speech on us who heard it. For the maiden, lady
as she was, had become a sister to us.

Yet she was resolved; and hearing that the poet had remembered where he
might hear of this gentleman in London, to deliver to him his poem, she
begged me to go with the man of verse and find him out, and if possible
bring him to her.

Which I did with no great difficulty. For the Irishman--who seemed a
sort of steward of Turlogh's household--was still in his lodgings,
waiting an audience with the Secretary's secretary. And when he heard
who it was had sent me, he fell on his knees and thanked the saints for
vouchsafing his master this great mercy; and, never looking twice at the
poet, he came with me joyfully to the maiden.

It was all as the poet had reported. And the fellow had somewhat more
to say. Which was that when the lady Cantire, now six months ago, had
returned home to die, she had confessed to her lord her wickedness with
respect to the maiden, whom she fully believed, despite her flight, to
be in the clutches of the wicked English captain, who had vowed to move
heaven and earth to find her, and (as had been reported), had been as
good as his word. Turlogh found it hard to forgive his lady this great
wrong, and, since her death, had longed for his child as he had never
longed before. Furthermore, being now old and past