no; she was leaning and
listening to the sound of guns far in the west. The sound--I had
heard it in my sleep and again at intervals while dressing--broke
heavily on the mist that damped the panes and drifted through the
opening with a breeze that set the curls waving about her neck and
puffed out the silken shawl she had drawn around her naked shoulders.

Sir Luke looked up, and was the first to catch sight of me.

'Hear the guns?' he said. 'Your foot hasn't the luck of your horse.
The King caught 'em, drove 'em back over Lestithiel Bridge, and has
been keeping 'em on the run all day, pressing 'em t'wards the coast.'

'Is that the report?' I asked.

'That's my report,' he answered; 'and'--thrusting forward one bemired
boot--'you may count on it. I've been following and watching the
fun.'

By this time Lady Glynn had turned and came past her husband to greet
me, without throwing him a look.

'You are the better for your rest?' she asked. 'At least I see that,
though wounded, you have contrived to pay me the compliment of
wearing fresh linen and a clean pair of boots.'

This was awkward, and--what was worse--she said it awkwardly, with a
sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all.
She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that
she had succeeded. He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown,
while she stood smiling, holding out a hand to me.

I touched it respectfully, and let it drop. 'The credit,' said I,
'belongs all to your servant Pascoe.'

'And here he is,' she took me up gaily, as Pascoe appeared in the
doorway. 'Is dinner ready?'

'To be served at once, my lady.'

'Then will you lead me to my seat, Captain Medhope? Yours is beside
me, on the right; yes, close there. My husband, at his end, can
enjoy the fire.'

We took our seats. I was hungry, and the dinner good. I ate of
everything, but can only recall an excellent grill of salmon and a
roast haunch of venison: the reason being that Lady Glynn kept me in
continued talk. Poor lady!--I had almost said, poor child!--for her
desperate artlessness became the more apparent to me the more she
persisted. Even I, who, as the reader has been told, have the
smallest skill in the ways of women, could see that here was one, of
high breeding but untutored, playing at a game at once above and
beneath her; almost as far above her achieving as it lay beneath her
true contempt. She knew that women can