e pays--poor
gentleman--he pays."

And then, still looking at the glass, she pointed to the doorway through
which her sister had come, and in obedience to her gesture of command,
Mistress Anne stole silently away.

CHAPTER X--"Yes--I have marked him"

Through the brilliant, happy year succeeding to his marriage my Lord of
Dunstanwolde lived like a man who dreams a blissful dream and knows it is
one.

"I feel," he said to his lady, "as if 'twere too great rapture to last,
and yet what end could come, unless you ceased to be kind to me; and, in
truth, I feel that you are too noble above all other women to change,
unless I were more unworthy than I could ever be since you are mine."

Both in the town and in the country, which last place heard many things
of his condition and estate through rumour, he was the man most wondered
at and envied of his time--envied because of his strange happiness;
wondered at because having, when long past youth, borne off this arrogant
beauty from all other aspirants she showed no arrogance to him, and was
as perfect a wife as could have been some woman without gifts whom he had
lifted from low estate and endowed with rank and fortune. She seemed
both to respect himself and her position as his lady and spouse. Her
manner of reigning in his household was among his many delights the
greatest. It was a great house, and an old one, built long before by a
Dunstanwolde whose lavish feasts and riotous banquets had been the
notable feature of his life. It was curiously rambling in its structure.
The rooms of entertainment were large and splendid, the halls and
staircases stately; below stairs there was space for an army of servants
to be disposed of; and its network of cellars and wine-vaults was so
beyond all need that more than one long arched stone passage was shut up
as being without use, and but letting cold, damp air into corridors
leading to the servants' quarters. It was, indeed, my Lady Dunstanwolde
who had ordered the closing of this part when it had been her pleasure to
be shown her domain by her housekeeper, the which had greatly awed and
impressed her household as signifying that, exalted lady as she was, her
wit was practical as well as brilliant, and that her eyes being open to
her surroundings, she meant not that her lacqueys should rob her and her
scullions filch, thinking that she was so high that she was ignorant of
common things and blind.

"You will be well hou