orinda," he began breathlessly, through set teeth.

She could have left him and not answered, but she chose to restrain the
pace of her wild beast for a moment and look at him.

"'Your ladyship!'" she corrected his audacity. "Or--'my Lady
Dunstanwolde.'"

"There was a time"--he said.

"This morning," she said, "I found a letter in a casket in my closet. I
do not know the mad villain who wrote it. I never knew him."

"You did not," he cried, with an oath, and then laughed scornfully.

"The letter lies in ashes on the hearth," she said. "'Twas burned
unopened. Do not ride so close, Sir John, and do not play the madman and
the beast with the wife of my Lord Dunstanwolde."

"'The wife!'" he answered. "'My lord!' 'Tis a new game this, and well
played, by God!"

She did not so much as waver in her look, and her wide eyes smiled.

"Quite new," she answered him--"quite new. And could I not have played
it well and fairly, I would not have touched the cards. Keep your horse
off, Sir John. Mine is restive, and likes not another beast near him;"
and she touched the creature with her whip, and he was gone like a
thunderbolt.

The next day, being in her room, Anne saw her come from her
dressing-table with a sealed letter in her hand. She went to the bell
and rang it.

"Anne," she said, "I am going to rate my woman and turn her from my
service. I shall not beat or swear at her as I was wont to do with my
women in time past. You will be afraid, perhaps; but you must stay with
me."

She was standing by the fire with the letter held almost at arm's length
in her finger-tips, when the woman entered, who, seeing her face, turned
pale, and casting her eyes upon the letter, paler still, and began to
shake.

"You have attended mistresses of other ways than mine," her lady said in
her slow, clear voice, which seemed to cut as knives do. "Some fool and
madman has bribed you to serve him. You cannot serve me also. Come
hither and put this in the fire. If 'twere to be done I would make you
hold it in the live coals with your hand."

The woman came shuddering, looking as if she thought she might be struck
dead. She took the letter and kneeled, ashen pale, to burn it. When
'twas done, her mistress pointed to the door.

"Go and gather your goods and chattels together, and leave within this
hour," she said. "I will be my own tirewoman till I can find one who
comes to me honest."

When she was gone, Anne sat ga