“Great God!  No!  No!” he cried; “I am a man and you are the life of me!  I come to you not as other men, who love and speak their passion.  Mine has been a burden hidden and borne so long.  It woke at sight of a child, it fed on visions of a girl; before I knew its power it had become my life.  The portals of my prison are open and I see the sun.  Think you I will let them be closed—­be closed again?”

And he would not be withheld and swept her to his breast, and she, lying there, clung to him with a little sobbing cry of joy and gratefulness, uttering wild, sweet, low, broken words.

“I am so young,” she said.  “Life is so strong; the world seems full of flowers.  Sure some of them are mine.  My heart beats so—­it so beats.  Forgive! forgive!”

“Tis from to-day our life begins,” he whispered, solemnly.  “And God so deal with me, Heart, as I shall deal with you.”

CHAPTER XXVII

“’Twas the night thou hidst the package in the wall”

“So,” said the fashionable triflers, “’twas the Duke after all, and his Grace flies to France to draw his errand to a close, and when he flies back again, upon the wings of love, five villages will roast oxen whole and drink ale to the chiming of wedding-bells.”

“Lud!” said my Lady Betty, this time with her pettish air, this matter not being to her liking, for why should a Duke fall in love with widows when there were exquisite languishing unmarried ladies near at hand.  “’Tis a wise beauty who sets bells ringing in five villages by marrying a duke, instead of taking a spendthrift rake who is but a baronet and has no estate at all.  I could have told you whom her ladyship would wed if she were asked.”

“If she were asked! good Lord!” cried Sir Chris Crowell, as red as a turkey-cock.  “And this I can tell you, ’tis not the five villages she marries, nor the Duke, but the man.  And ’tis not the fine lady he takes to his heart, but our Clo, and none other, and would have taken her in her smock had she been a beggar wench.  ’Tis an honest love-match, that I swear!”

Thereupon my Lady Betty laughed.

“Those who see Sir John Oxon’s face now,” she said, “do not behold a pretty thing.  And my lady sees it at every turn.  She can go nowhere but she finds him at her elbow glaring.”

“He would play some evil trick on her for revenge, I vow,” said another lady.  “She hath Mistress Anne with her nearly always in these days, as if she would keep him off by having a companion; but ’tis no use, follow and badger her he will.”

“Badger her!” blustered Sir Chris.  “He durst not, the jackanapes!  He is not so fond of drawing point as he was a few years ago.”

“’Tis badgering and naught else,” said Mistress Lovely.  “I have watched him standing by and pouring words like poison in her ear, and she disdaining to reply or look as though she heard.”

My Lady Betty laughed again with a prettier venom still.