But look at them." (They were with
the whole party at racquets in the court, and my lord Duke, having made
a splendid stroke, glowing and laughing bowed in response to a round of
applause.) "Is there a husband at Court--though he were not
thirty-five--who has reason to feel as safe as the old Earl
Dunstanwolde may--when his wife is guest to such a pretty fellow as
he?" nodding her head towards his Grace. "Never in my days saw I a
thing so out of nature! 'Tis as though they were not flesh and blood,
but--but of some stuff _we_ are not made of. 'Tis but human he should
make sly love to her, and her eyes wander after him despite herself
wheresoever he goes. All know how a woman's eyes will follow a man, and
his hers, but when these look at each other 'tis steadfast honesty that
looks out of them--and 'tis scarce to be understood."

_CHAPTER XXI_

_Upon the Moor_

Throughout the festivities which followed each other, day by day, my
Lady Dunstanwolde was queen of every revel. 'Twas she who led the
adventurous party who visited the gipsy encampment in the glen by
moonlight, and so won the heart of the old gipsy queen that she took
her to her tent and instructed her in the mysteries of spells and
potions. She walked among them as though she had been bred and born one
of their tribe, and came forth from one tent carrying in her arms a
brown infant, and showed it to the company, laughing like a girl and
making pretty sounds at the child when it stared at her with great
black eyes like her own, and shook at it all her rings, which she
stripped from her fingers, holding them in the closed palm of her hand
to make a rattle of. She stirred the stew hanging to cook over the
camp-fire, and begged a plate of it for each of the company, and ate
her own with such gay appetite as recalled to Osmonde the day he had
watched her on the moor; and the gipsy women stood by showing their
white teeth in their pleasure, and the gipsy men hung about with black
shining eyes fixed on her in stealthy admiration. She stood by the fire
in the light of the flame, having fantastically wound a scarlet scarf
about her head, and 'twas as though she might have been a gipsy queen
herself.

"And indeed," she said, as they rode home, "I have often enough thought
I should like to be one of them; and when I was a child, and was in a
passion, more than once planned to stain my face and run away to the
nearest camp I could come upon. Indeed, I think I w