hed or hidden under
a bushel; for, being of rank and highly connected through mother as well
as father, and playing her cards with great wit and skill, she could not
be thrust aside.

At her first hunt ball she set aflame every male breast in the shire,
unmasking such a battery of charms as no man could withstand the fire of.
Her dazzling eye, her wondrous shape, the rich music of her laugh, and
the mocking wit of her sharp saucy tongue were weapons to have armed a
dozen women, and she was but one, and in the first rich tempting glow of
blooming youth.

She turned more heads and caused more quarrels than she could have
counted had she sat up half the night. She went to her coach with her
father followed by a dozen gallants, each ready to spit the other for a
smile. Her smiles were wondrous, but there seemed always a touch of
mockery or disdain in them which made them more remembered than if they
had been softer.

One man there was, who perchance found something in her high glance not
wholly scornful, but he was used to soft treatment from women, and had,
in sooth, expected milder glances than were bestowed upon him. This was
young Sir John Oxon, who had found himself among the fair sex that night
as great a beau as she had been a belle; but two dances he had won from
her, and this was more than any other man could boast, and what other
gallants envied him with darkest hatred.

Sir Jeoffry, who had watched her as she queened it amongst rakes and fops
and honest country squires and knights, had marked the vigour with which
they plied her with an emotion which was a new sensation to his drink-
bemuddled brain. So far as it was in his nature to love another than
himself, he had learned to love this young lovely virago of his own flesh
and blood, perchance because she was the only creature who had never
quailed before him, and had always known how to bend him to her will.

When the chariot rode away, he looked at her as she sat erect in the
early morning light, as unblenching, bright, and untouched in bloom as if
she had that moment risen from her pillow and washed her face in dew. He
was not so drunk as he had been at midnight, but he was a little maudlin.

"By God, thou art handsome, Clo!" he said. "By God, I never saw a finer
woman!"

"Nor I," she answered back, "which I thank Heaven for."

"Thou pretty, brazen baggage," her father laughed. "Old Dunstanwolde
looked thee well over to-night. He never looked