“Three days!” cries he. “’Twas nearer four.”

Sir John turned on him, laughing still, seeming in very truth as if the thing amused him.

“When, when?” he said.  “Never, I swear!” and held a pinch of snuff in his fingers daintily, his eyes gleaming blue as sapphires through the new light in them.

“Swear away!” cried Sir Christopher; “thou wast too drunk to remember.  ’Twas the night thou hidst the package in the wall.”

Then he burst forth again in laughter, for Sir John had so started that he forgot his pinch of snuff and scattered it.

“Canst see ’tis no slander, my lady,” he cried, pointing at Sir John, who stood like a man who wakes from long sleep and is bewildered by the thoughts which rush through his brain.  “I laughed till I was like to crack my sides.”  Then to Sir John, “Thou hadst but just left Clo Wildairs and I rode with thee to Essex.  Lord, how I laughed to watch thee groping to find a place safe enough to put it in.  ‘I’m drunk,’ says thou, ’and I would have it safe till I am sober.  ’Twill be safe here,’ and stuffed it in the broken plaster ’neath the window-sill.  And safe it was, for I’ll warrant thou hast not thought of it since, and safe thou’lt find it at the Cow at Wickben still.”

Sir John struck one closed hand sudden on the palm of the other.

“It comes back to thee,” cried Sir Christopher, with a grimace aside at his audience.

“Ay, it comes back,” answers Sir John; “it comes back.”  And he broke forth into a short, excited laugh, there being in its sound a note of triumph almost hysteric; and hearing this they stared, for why in such case he should be triumphant, Heaven knew.

“’Twas a love-token!” said Lady Betty, simpering, for of a sudden he had become another man—­no longer black-visaged, but gallant, and smiling with his old charming, impudent, irresistible air.  He bent and took her hand and kissed her finger-tips with this same old enchanting insolence.

“Had your ladyship given it to me,” he said, “I had not hid it in a wall, but in my heart.”  And with a soft glance and a smiling bow he left their circle and sauntered towards the ball-room.

“’Twas the last time I spoke with him,” said my Lady Betty, when he was talked of later.  “I wonder if ’twas in his head when he kissed my hand—­if indeed ’twas a matter he himself planned or had aught to do with.  Faith! though he was a villain he had a killing air when he chose.”

When her ladyship had played off all her airs and graces upon her servitors she led them again to the ball-room that she might vary her triumphs and fascinations.  A minuet was being played, and my Lady Dunstanwolde was among the dancers, moving stately and slow in her white and silver, while the crowd looked on, telling each other of the preparations being made for her marriage, and that my lord Duke of Osmonde was said to worship her, and could scarce live through the hours he was held from her in France.