r demeanour, and she kept Mistress Margery
Wimpole in discreet attendance upon her, as if she had been the daughter
of a Spanish Hidalgo, never to be approached except in the presence of
her duenna. Poor Mistress Margery, finding her old fears removed, was
overpowered with new ones. She had no lawlessness or hoyden manners to
contend with, but instead a haughtiness so high and demands so great that
her powers could scarcely satisfy the one or her spirit stand up before
the other.

"It is as if one were lady-in-waiting to her Majesty's self," she used to
whimper when she was alone and dare do so. "Surely the Queen has not
such a will and such a temper. She will have me toil to look worthy of
her in my habit, and bear myself like a duchess in dignity. Alack! I
have practised my obeisance by the hour to perfect it, so that I may
escape her wrath. And I must know how to look, and when and where to
sit, and with what air of being near at hand, while I must see nothing!
And I must drag my failing limbs hither and thither with genteel ease
while I ache from head to foot, being neither young nor strong."

The poor lady was so overawed by, and yet so admired, her charge, that it
was piteous to behold.

"She is an arrant fool," quoth Mistress Clorinda to her father. "A nice
duenna she would be, forsooth, if she were with a woman who needed
watching. She could be hoodwinked as it pleased me a dozen times a day.
It is I who am her guard, not she mine! But a beauty must drag some spy
about with her, it seems, and she I can make to obey me like a spaniel.
We can afford no better, and she is well born, and since I bought her the
purple paduasoy and the new lappets she has looked well enough to serve."

"Dunstanwolde need not fear for thee now," said Sir Jeoffry. "Thou art a
clever and foreseeing wench, Clo."

"Dunstanwolde nor any man!" she answered. "There will be no gossip of
me. It is Anne and Barbara thou must look to, Dad, lest their plain
faces lead them to show soft hearts. My face is my fortune!"

When Sir John Oxon paid his visit to Sir Jeoffry the days of Mistress
Margery were filled with carking care. The night before he arrived,
Mistress Clorinda called her to her closet and laid upon her her commands
in her own high way. She was under her woman's hands, and while her
great mantle of black hair fell over the back of her chair and lay on the
floor, her tirewoman passing the brush over it, lock by lock,