“Softly, Mr. Pyncheon!” said the carpenter with scornful composure. “Softly, an it please your worship, else you will spoil those rich lace ruffles at your wrists! Is it my crime if you have sold your daughter for the mere hope of getting a sheet of yellow parchment into your clutch? There sits Mistress Alice quietly asleep. Now let Matthew Maule try whether she be as proud as the carpenter found her awhile since.”

He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, subdued, inward acquiescence, and a bending of her form towards him, like the flame of a torch when it indicates a gentle draught of air.

He beckoned with his hand, and, rising from her chair, — blindly, but undoubtingly, as tending to her sure and inevitable centre, — the proud Alice approached