e maids who had remained with me since
my uncle's death noticed this, by nature as it were, and in revenge
would not serve him. The end of it was that, fearing lest they should do
him some evil turn with the priests or otherwise, I sent them away and
hired men to take their place. This distaste of Kari for women I set
down to all that he had suffered at the hands of his false and beautiful
wife not wrongly as I think.

CHAPTER V

THE COMING OF BLANCHE

One day, it was the last of the year, the anniversary of the death of my
uncle whose goodness and wisdom I pondered on more and more as time went
by, having a little time to spare from larger affairs, I chanced to be
in the shop in the front of the house, which, as John Grimmer had said,
he kept as a trap to "snare the ladybirds," and I continued, because I
knew that he would not wish that anything should be changed. Here I was
pleasing myself by looking over such pieces as we had to sell which the
head craftsman was showing to me, since myself I knew little of them,
except as a matter of account.

Whilst I was thus engaged there entered the shop a very fine lady
accompanied by a still finer lordling arrayed so similarly that, at
first sight, in their hooded ermine cloaks it was difficult to know
which was man and which was woman. When they threw these aside, however,
for the shop was warm after the open air, I knew more than that, since
with a sudden stoppage of the heart I saw before me none other than the
lady Blanche Aleys and her relative, the lord Deleroy.

She, who in the old days of the Hastings burnings had been but a lily
bud, was now an open flower and beautiful exceedingly; indeed in her own
fashion the most beautiful woman that ever I beheld. Tall she was and
stately as a lily bloom, white as a lily also, save for those wondrous
blue eyes over which curled the dark lashes. In shape, too, she was
perfect, full-breasted, yet not too full, small-waisted, and with
delicate limbs, a very Venus, such an one as I had seen in ancient
marble brought in a ship from Italy and given, as I believe, to the
King, who loved such things, to be set up in his palace.

My lord also was yet handsomer than he had been, more set and manly,
though still he affected his coxcomb party-coloured dress with the
turned-up shoes of which the points were fastened by little golden
chains beneath the knee. Still he was a fine man with his roving black
eyes, his loose mouth and litt