usehold, sending
through one of my people that letter? Go to; thou art a fool, Myles
Falworth!"

Myles stood staring at the Earl without making an effort to speak. The
words that he had heard suddenly flashed, as it were, a new light into
his mind. In that flash he fully recognized, and for the first time,
the strange and wonderful forbearance the great Earl had shown to him,
a poor obscure boy. What did it mean? Was Lord Mackworth his secret
friend, after all, as Gascoyne had more than once asserted? So Myles
stood silent, thinking many things.

Meantime the other lay back upon the cylindrical bolsters, looking
thoughtfully at him. "How old art thou?" said he at last.

"Seventeen last April," answered Myles.

"Then thou art old enough to have some of the thoughts of a man, and to
lay aside those of a boy. Haply thou hast had foolish things in thy
head this short time past; it is time that thou put them away. Harkee,
sirrah! the Lady Alice is a great heiress in her own right, and mayst
command the best alliance in England--an Earl--a Duke. She groweth apace
to a woman, and then her kind lieth in Courts and great houses. As for
thee, thou art but a poor lad, penniless and without friends to aid thee
to open advancement. Thy father is attainted, and one whisper of where
he lieth hid would bring him thence to the Tower, and haply to the
block. Besides that, he hath an enemy, as Sir James Lee hath already
told thee--an enemy perhaps more great and powerful than myself. That
enemy watcheth for thy father and for thee; shouldst thou dare raise thy
head or thy fortune ever so little, he would haply crop them both, and
that parlously quick. Myles Falworth, how dost thou dare to lift thine
eyes to the Lady Alice de Mowbray?"

Poor Myles stood silent and motionless. "Sir," said he at last, in a
dry choking voice, "thou art right, and I have been a fool. Sir, I will
never raise mine eyes to look upon the Lady Alice more."

"I say not that either, boy," said the Earl; "but ere thou dost so dare,
thou must first place thyself and thy family whence ye fell. Till then,
as thou art an honest man, trouble her not. Now get thee gone."

As Myles crossed the dark and silent courtyards, and looked up at the
clear, still twinkle of the stars, he felt a kind of dull wonder that
they and the night and the world should seem so much the same, and he be
so different.

The first stroke had been given that was to break in pieces his boyhoo