allant, even taken from behind an oriel window, make
such change indeed? I never before saw this look, nor this colour,
forsooth; it hath improved thee wondrously, Anne--wondrously."

"Sister," faltered Anne, "I so desired to see your birth-night ball-gown,
of which Mistress Margery hath much spoken--I so desired--I thought it
would not matter if, the door being open and it spread forth upon the
bed--I--I stole a look at it. And then I was tempted--and came in."

"And then was tempted more," Clorinda laughed, still regarding her
downcast countenance shrewdly, "by a thing far less to be resisted--a
fine gentleman from town, with love-locks falling on his shoulders and
ladies' hearts strung at his saddle-bow by scores. Which found you the
most beautiful?"

"Your gown is splendid, sister," said Anne, with modest shyness. "There
will be no beauty who will wear another like it; or should there be one,
she will not carry it as you will."

"But the man--the man, Anne," Clorinda laughed again. "What of the man?"

Anne plucked up just enough of her poor spirit to raise her eyes to the
brilliant ones that mocked at her.

"With such gentlemen, sister," she said, "is it like that _I_ have aught
to do?"

Mistress Clorinda dropped her hand and left laughing.

"'Tis true," she said, "it is not; but for this one time, Anne, thou
lookest almost a woman."

"'Tis not beauty alone that makes womanhood," said Anne, her head on her
breast again. "In some book I have read that--that it is mostly pain. I
am woman enough for that."

"You have read--you have read," quoted Clorinda. "You are the bookworm,
I remember, and filch romances and poems from the shelves. And you have
read that it is mostly pain that makes a woman? 'Tis not true. 'Tis a
poor lie. _I_ am a woman and I do not suffer--for I _will_ not, that I
swear! And when I take an oath I keep it, mark you! It is men women
suffer for; that was what your scholar meant--for such fine gentlemen as
the one you have just watched while he rode away. More fools they! No
man shall make _me_ womanly in such a fashion, I promise you! Let _them_
wince and kneel; _I_ will not."

"Sister," Anne faltered, "I thought you were not within. The gentleman
who rode away--did the servants know?"

"That did they," quoth Clorinda, mocking again. "They knew that I would
not receive him to-day, and so sent him away. He might have known as
much himself, but he is an arrant popinja