“No,” I answered. “Bring her here to laugh at me as she laughed in the twilight beneath the guesthouse window.”

I thought he would murder me with the poniard he drew, but presently he put it up.

“She is come to her senses,” he said. “Up in the state cabin are bright lights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I have been singing to the lute, to them — and to her. She is saved from the peril into which you plunged her; she knows that the King’s Court of High Commission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the fetters which she now shudders to think of; that the King and one besides will condone her past short madness. Her cheeks are roses, her eyes are stars. But now, when I pressed her hand between the