and not contemptuously, for that was never the
lad's way with me. "Master Wingfield," he said, standing before me
and holding his champing horse hard by the bits, "I pray you have
the grace to explain this matter of the goods."

I saw that Mistress Mary had been acquainting him with what had
passed and her puzzlement over it.

"There is naught to explain, Sir Humphrey," said I. "'Tis very
simple: Mistress Mary hath the goods for which she sent to England."

"Master Wingfield, you know those are my Lady Culpeper's goods, and
I have no right to them," cried Mary. But I bowed and said, "Madam,
the goods are yours, and not Lady Culpeper's."

"But I--I lied when I gave the list to my grandmother," she
cried out, half sobbing, for she was, after all, little more than a
child tiptoed to womanhood by enthusiasm.

"Madam," said I, and I bowed again. "You mistake yourself; Mistress
Mary Cavendish cannot lie, and the goods are in truth yours."

She and Sir Humphrey looked at each other; then Harry made a stride
forward, and forcing back his horse with one hand, grasped me with
the other. "Harry, Harry," he said in a whisper. "Tell me, for God's
sake, what have you done."

"The goods are Mistress Mary Cavendish's," said I. They looked at me
as I have seen folk look at a page of Virgil.

"Were they, after all, not my Lady Culpeper's?" asked Sir Humphrey.

"They are Mistress Mary Cavendish's," said I.

Mary turned suddenly to Sir Humphrey. "'Tis time you were gone now,
Humphrey," she said, softly. "'Twas only last night you were here,
and there is need of caution, and your mother--"

But Humphrey was loth to go. "'Tis not late," he said, "and I would
know more of this matter."

"You will never know more of Master Wingfield, if that is what you
wait for," she returned, with a half laugh, "and, Humphrey, your
sister Cicely said but this morning that your mother was
over-curious. I pray you, go, and Master Wingfield will take me
home. I pray you, go!"

Sir Humphrey took her hand and bent low over it, and murmured
something; then, before he sprang to his saddle, he came close to me
again. "Harry," he whispered, "she should not be in this business,
and I would have not had it so could I have helped it, and, I pray
you, have a care to her safety." This he spoke so low that Mary
could not hear, and, moreover, she, with one of those sudden turns
of hers that made her have as many faces of delight as a diamond in
the sun, had