as cowards in grain.'

'I hope, Sir Luke,' said I, 'you, with experience of us, have tried
to teach her better.'

'In faith, no,' he replied yet more brutally, backing his sneer with
a laugh. 'I saw no reason for that.'

'And yet,' said I deliberately, peeling my pear, 'you told me to-day
that something might be said even for such a man as your friend
Chester.'

He jumped up with an oath. Yet I believe he might even now have
restrained himself had not his wife--and with a face as pale as a
ghost's--laid a hand on my arm.

'I had forgotten your wound,' she said, ignoring her husband.
'You handle the knife awkwardly. Let me cut the fruit and we will
share.'

With a turn of the hand Sir Luke hurled back his chair, and it fell
with a crash.

'By God, Kate! if you have hired this man, he shall murder first and
do his love-making afterwards. Nay, but I'll stop that, too.
Look first to yourself, madame!'

He had whipped out his sword and was actually running upon her before
I could get mine clear. But I was in time to beat down his point and
then--for he was slow-witted and three-parts drunk--with a trick of
wrist that luckily required little strength, I disarmed him.
His sword struck the farther edge of the table, smashed a decanter of
wine and dropped to the floor.

We were standing now, all three; Lady Glynn a little behind my elbow.

'Are you going to kill him?' she asked, and he heard.

For a moment he stared at her stupidly, then at the stream of wine
running across the table, then back at her--and, so staring, flung up
both hands and plunged forward. His brow, as he fell like an ox,
thudded against the chair from which, a moment since, she had arisen.

I caught up a candle. But she was before me and had dropped on her
knees beside him. In his fall he had rolled over on his side, and
for a moment I supposed her to be busy loosening his collar.
But no--as I held the candle close she was feeling in his pockets,
and in the light of it she held up a bunch of keys.

'I am glad you did not kill him,' she said simply, rising from her
knees. 'There was no need.'

'No need?' I repeated stupidly, swaying with weakness.

'You shall see.'

She slipped by me and from the room. I bent and loosened Sir Luke's
collar, and essayed to lift him, but had to relinquish the effort and
drop into a chair, where I sat staring at the fallen wreck. While I
stared, still dizzy, I heard the voice of old Pascoe behin