the best. He forbade me to mention your
name ever more, or even think of you again--as if you were not ever in
my mind."

"Does not Lady Maude relent at all?"

"Lady Maude relent! Nay, rather does she grow more bitter against me
day by day, and that I may forget thee she makes me tenter-stitch from
morn till eve. Even Margaret gives her voice bitterly against me now."

"Thou hast no one to console thee, then?"

"Save Lettice, no."

"Poor Dorothy. And Father Nicholas, what saith he? He is a friend of
mine."

"He is so grave I have not mentioned it to him."

"Then by my troth, Doll, bid him meet me here to-morrow night. He
shall help us, he shall befriend thee. Tell him all, he can be well
trusted, I wot, unless he has strangely changed since he hath taken
the cowl. Bid him come here alone and without fail."

Soon, all too soon, the brief interview came to an end, and Dorothy
had to go back to the Hall, while her lover, having reluctantly parted
from her when he dare accompany her no further, slowly wound his way
back to the sorry hut which served him, in common with the rest of his
fellows, as a home.

He had no heart to join in the boisterous fun with which his
companions were making themselves merry as he entered, and passing
them unnoticed by, he took a seat in the furthest corner of the room
and watched the faggots as they blazed and burned away upon the hearth
in front of him.

Dorothy returned with a sad heart, too. The moment of bliss which had
so transported her with delight had passed away again, and she found
herself in pretty well the same downcast frame of mind in which she
had been before, for she knew not when she would see her lover again,
and she dare not let herself ponder on the terrible risks her noble
lover ran.

"Well, Dorothy," said Lady Maude, as she burst into the maiden's room
ere Doll had found time to divest herself of hood and wimple, "thou
art serving us a pretty trick. Thou would'st meet thy whilom lover all
unbeknown to us, eh? Pick up thy things and follow me."

It would have been worse than useless to have refused, and argument,
Dorothy knew of old, at such a time would have been equally futile;
so, while her blood almost froze with terror in her veins, she meekly
obeyed her step-mother and followed her through the long ballroom into
the banqueting-room below in a perfect agony of terror lest her lover
had been taken and was about to be confronted with her.

The stone-fl