self as she spoke.

"Talk not to me of other men--I'll not brook it!" cried he, advancing
toward her a few rapid paces. "Think you I have no heart?" His eye
gleamed, and he came on yet a step in his strange wooing. "Your face is
here, here," he cried, "deep in my heart! I must always look upon it, or
I am a lost man!"

"'Tis a face not so fair as that," said the Lady Catharine, demurely.

"'Tis the fairest face in England, or in the world!" cried her lover;
and now he was close at her side. Her hand, she knew not how, rested in
his own. Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young
woman's nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical,
almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity and candor.

"'Tis a face but blemished," said she, slowly, the color rising to her
cheek. "See! Here is the birth-mark of the house of Knollys. They tell
me--my very good friends tell me, that this is the mark of shame, the
bar sinister of the hand of justice. You know the story of our house."

"Somewhat of it," said Law.

"My brother is not served of the writ when Parliament is called. This
you know. Tell me why?"

"I know the so-called reason," replied John Law. "'Twas brought out in
his late case at the King's Bench."

"True. 'Twas said that my grandfather, past eighty, was not the father
of those children of his second wife. There is talk that--"

"'Twas three generations ago, this talk of the Knollys shortcoming. I am
not eighty. I am twenty-four, and I love you, Catharine Knollys."

"It was three generations ago," said the Lady Catharine, slowly and
musingly, as though she had not heard the speech of her suitor. "Three
generations ago. Yet never since then hath there been clean name for the
Banbury estate. Never yet hath its peer sat in his rightful place in
Parliament. And never yet hath eldest daughter of this house failed to
show this mark of shame, this unpurged contempt for that which is
ordained. Surely it would seem fate holds us in its hands."

"You tell me these things," said John Law, "because you feel it is right
to tell them. And I tell you of my future, as you tell me of your past.
Why? Because, Lady Catharine Knollys, it has already come to matter of
faith between us."

The girl leaned back against the wall near which she had seated herself.
The young man bent forward, taking both her hands quietly in his own
now, and gazing steadily into her eyes. There was no triumph in his
gaze. Pe