eye kindled with admiration and an
emotion new to her indeed.

"How beautiful!" she said. "He is like a young Adonis, and has the
bearing of a royal prince! How can it--by what strange chance hath it
come here?"

She had not regarded it more than long enough to have uttered these
words, when a fear came upon her, and she felt that she had fallen into
misfortune.

"What must I do with it?" she trembled. "What will she say, whether she
knows of its being within the chamber or not? She will be angry with me
that I have dared to touch it. What shall I do?"

She regarded it again with eyes almost suffused. Her blush and the
sensibility of her emotion gave to her plain countenance a new liveliness
of tint and expression.

"I will put it back where I found it," she said, "and the one who knows
it will find it later. It cannot be she--it cannot be she! If I laid it
on her table she would rate me bitterly--and she can be bitter when she
will."

She bent and placed it within the shadow of the valance again, and as she
felt it touch the hard oak of the polished floor her bosom rose with a
soft sigh.

"It is an unseemly thing to do," she said; "'tis as though one were
uncivil; but I dare not--I dare not do otherwise."

She would have turned to leave the apartment, being much overcome by the
incident, but just as she would have done so she heard the sound of
horses' feet through the window by which she must pass, and looked out to
see if it was Clorinda who was returning from her ride. Mistress
Clorinda was a matchless horsewoman, and a marvel of loveliness and
spirit she looked when she rode, sitting upon a horse such as no other
woman dared to mount--always an animal of the greatest beauty, but of so
dangerous a spirit that her riding-whip was loaded like a man's.

This time it was not she; and when Mistress Anne beheld the young
gentleman who had drawn rein in the court she started backward and put
her hand to her heart, the blood mantling her pale cheek again in a
flood. But having started back, the next instant she started forward to
gaze again, all her timid soul in her eyes.

"'Tis he!" she panted; "'tis he himself! He hath come in hope to speak
with my sister, and she is abroad. Poor gentleman, he hath come in such
high spirit, and must ride back heavy of heart. How comely, and how
finely clad he is!"

He was, in sooth, with his rich riding-habit, his handsome face, his
plumed hat, and the sun shi