with these things he slowly,
but surely, won to his following all save a very few of those I had
thought my fast friends, it was not a thing marvelous or without
precedent. Upon his side was good that might be seen and handled; on
mine was only a dubious right and a not at all dubious danger. I do not
think it plagued me much. The going of those who had it in their heart
to wish to go left me content, and for those who fawned upon him from
the first, or for the rabble multitude who flung up their caps and ran
at his heels, I cared not a doit. There were still Rolfe and West and
the Governor, Jeremy Sparrow and Diccon.

My lord and I met, perforce, in the street, at the Governor's house,
in church, on the river, in the saddle. If we met in the presence of
others, we spoke the necessary formal words of greeting or leave-taking,
and he kept his countenance; if none were by, off went the mask. The
man himself and I looked each other in the eyes and passed on. Once we
encountered on a late evening among the graves, and I was not alone.
Mistress Percy had been restless, and had gone, despite the minister's
protests, to sit upon the river bank. When I returned from the assembly
and found her gone, I went to fetch her. A storm was rolling slowly up.
Returning the long way through the churchyard, we came upon him sitting
beside a sunken grave, his knees drawn up to meet his chin, his eyes
gloomily regardful of the dark broad river, the unseen ocean, and
the ship that could not return for weeks to come. We passed him in
silence,--I with a slight bow, she with a slighter curtsy. An hour
later, going down the street in the dusk of the storm, I ran against Dr.
Lawrence Bohun. "Don't stop me!" he panted. "The Italian doctor is away
in the woods gathering simples, and they found my Lord Carnal in a fit
among the graves, half an hour agone." My lord was bled, and the next
morning went hunting.

The lady whom I had married abode with me in the minister's house, held
her head high, and looked the world in the face. She seldom went from
home, but when she did take the air it was with pomp and circumstance.
When that slender figure and exquisite face, set off by as rich apparel
as could be bought from a store of finery brought in by the Southampton,
and attended by a turbaned negress and a serving man who had been to the
wars, and had escaped the wheel by the skin of his teeth, appeared in
the street, small wonder if a greater commotion a