The peacock, picking his stilted way along the lower terrace walk, conscious of his magnificence with the sunshine on his burnished breast, rejoiced at the sound of approaching steps: here, at last, was some one to see and to admire.

But in vain did Juno’s bird spread and parade, advance and retreat, and display for the newcomers the glories of his outspread tail, which defied the sun with its fifty iridescent eyes. The elder of the two young men interrupted but for a second an emphatic speech to cast an indifferent glance upon the strutting splendour; while the younger poked at it idly with the stock of his whip. Offended, and with discordant protest, the peacock flapped on to the stone lion that heraldically guarded the terrace stairs and swept over their heads the fall of his unappreciated train.

Lionel Ratcliffe, the emphatic speaker, turned to survey with sullen eyes the scene which spread away beneath the balustrade of the Peacock Walk. It was the ripest hour of an early June day. The wood-crowned slopes, dropping down from the garden, were bathed in mellow light. Farther away, rich pastures, gently swelling into knolls, melted into purple haze, until they were gathered into the distant amethystine moors. Almost as far as the eye could reach, the land and all that stood on it—timber, meadow, homestead, hamlet—belonged to Rockhurst, fit appanage to those massy castle walls that rose clear-cut against the blue air, in all the majesty of ancient power. And as he gazed, Lionel Ratcliffe’s heart grew sombre even as his glance. A keen-faced man, old-looking for his thirty years, somewhat below the middle height, with marked features, cold blue eyes and thin lips that betrayed the working of an intellect as sharp as the steel that hung by his side.

His companion was of vastly different stamp. Country bumpkin was written on the face of Edward Hare, on every seam of his oversmart suit; country wits stared from his prominent eye, were heralded by the laugh ever ready upon his mouth—a mouth, one dared swear, that had known no better taste in life than the rim of an ale can, the hard cheek of some bouncing Dorcas.

Waking from his abstraction, Ratcliffe wheeled upon his cousin, and resumed his indictment:—

“It is even as I tell you,” quoth he. “They are both as apt as tinder: it needs but a spark now to set the glow. ’Slife, Ned, I little thought thine would be the hand to strike flint!”

“Mine, Cousin Lionel?” broke in the other, whining. “Nay, nay—”

But the first, flinging out an accusing forefinger, bore down the plaintive interruption:—

“Then why didst bring her over here to-day?—Come now, ’tis plain enough. Dost favour my suit, or young Rockhurst’s?”

“Why, you know I’ll have none but you,” bellowed Edward Hare. “Harry Rockhurst …?” he cried. “Phew!”

He snapped his fingers and blew through them, threw himself into an attitude of defiance and, so doing, stumbled into his new-fangled sword which, carry it at whatever angle he tried, seemed ever in his way. Ratcliffe steadied his kinsman, then, still holding him by the elbow, drew him toward the stone bench, overhung by climbing roses. Having jerked his companion down upon it, he let himself subside beside him, crossed his legs and proceeded, contemptuously, good-humoured yet incisive:—

“If I wed Mistress Harcourt, your sister, is’t not a bargain? Shalt not continue to have bed and board and bottle beneath her roof? Aye, and many more of old Harcourt’s round pieces to chirp in thy pockets at cockfight and hammer fair? And when we go to Whitehall …” He paused impressively.

Edward Hare was touched; his soft face became moved as by not distant tears.

“Good Lionel … dear coz! Odd’s babers! Do I not tell thee thou shalt have her?”

Ratcliffe resumed, casting his words into space with a sidelong watchfulness as to their effect.

“Whereas, mark, if Diana wed another, what of thee, then, my cock? ’Tis back to the bare ancestral acres with Sir Edward Hare. ’Tis farthing toss and small ale. For thou art poor, lad, damned poor! And a poor baronet—fie!”

The poor baronet made a wry face. He pushed his plumed hat off his forehead to scratch his perplexed head.

“Aye, small ale, plague on it! Farthing toss—pooh!”

“’Twill ne’er do, eh, Ned!” laughed the other.

“No, split me, ’twill ne’er serve a man like me!”

Sir Edward Hare rose, in his indignation, and promptly tripped again over his sword. Somewhat abashed, and trying the comfort of a new angle, he dropped his high tone once more for one of plaint:—

“But, Lord, coz, what can I do? Di is like the bay filly: she’ll neither lead nor drive. Ain’t I always a-singing your praises? ‘There’s the husband for you, Di,’ say I. ‘There’s the lad for me,’ say I, twenty times a day.”

Ratcliffe cursed his cousin in secret, as, rising in his turn, he clapped him affectionately on the shoulder.

“I marvel at you,” he bantered. “And will you walk your filly to the gate and expect her to take it on the standstill? Is that the way to deal with a woman? Shouldst say to her: ‘Hast noticed Cousin Lionel’s squint?… Prithee, sister, have ne’er a thing to do with Cousin Lionel: ’tis a sad bad man! Ah, there are tales, sister, terrible tales!’”

Edward gaped.

“Oh, and what will she do then?”

“Why, look into mine eyes the very next time; and, not finding the squint, perhaps find something else, something in them she never marked before.”

The young oaf nodded portentously.

“Aye,” cried he, “and then—”

“And then—Why, I see you take me. Hast sharp wits, coz!—Then will she begin to ponder on those dark deeds of mine, and wonder about Cousin Lionel, and think him a very different man after all from the kinsman who played with her and teased her all her life. But, zounds, man, such a cock of the walk as thou art need not be lectured on the art of love! Why, when we get that figure of thine to Court, what a stir will there be among the beauties!”

The poor youth made no attempt to disguise his flattered emotion.

“Ecod,” he smirked, looking down at his legs, “I’ll not say but I can hold my own among the petticoats. He, he—a word in thine ear, Lionel: Moll, you know—” he whispered into his cousin’s curls, laughing immoderately. “And little Prudence Prue, down at the Red Lion—” Here he whispered again and guffawed: “Odd’s babers, she did! But Di must not hear of it.”

With immovable gravity, the elder man submitted to these boisterous confidences; then, holding his cousin from him at arm’s length, surveyed him with an irony which must have pierced through anything less thick-skinned:—

“What a blade you are! There will be no holding you at Whitehall!”

He suddenly sighed, dropped his hands, shook his head, and assumed a tone of melancholy:—

“Heigho, but we must get thee to Court first! And these adieus will undo all. ’Slife, man, she’s ripe for love. ’Tis rebound, ’tis nature. After the cold fit, the hot one. After old Harcourt, the old husband promptly and happily demised, Harry Rockhurst the stripling, live and young!… After eighty, eighteen.…”

“Nay,” interrupted Edward, sapiently. “Harry Rockhurst is twenty.”

“Aye,” mused Lionel, “and so is our pretty Di. Lord! your worthy mother had scarce called out, ‘Oh,’ of Diana, before my Lady Rockhurst began her, ‘Ah,’ of that young whelp! Well, by this time, these babes will have plighted their troth, if the gods interfere not.” He turned on Hare, his fierce temper escaping him for an unguarded moment: “Why the foul fiend did you let her ride over here to-day?”

Ned swelled with dudgeon.

“I? How could I prevent it, pray?”

“Poor numskull, how couldst thou?” echoed the other, half aside.—“Well, well, I fear me, I am caught in my own springe! They might have philandered all summer and naught have come of it.… But I must needs work upon Grandam Chillingburgh, persuade her to summon the naughty grandchild in all haste from a bad match—and ’tis the parting will ruin all!”

He paused, biting his lip over vexed thoughts. Then his alert ear caught the fall of distant footsteps.

“Ah!” he cried, starting, “yonder they come! Let us to the upper terrace, Ned, and watch them from above.”

Sir Edward, who had been endeavouring to hit a bumblebee with his whip, and was lost in the excitement of the sport, burst into a roar of self-applause at an unexpectedly successful stroke:—

“Saw you that? I hit him. I hit him!… A great bumblebee!”

Ratcliffe clenched his hand, exasperated. Then, recalling his self-control, shrugged his shoulders, caught his cousin by the arm, and marched him determinedly toward the upper terrace stairs.

The two whose doings were exciting so much interest in Lionel Ratcliffe’s mind, came slowly along the Peacock Walk and halted beneath the watchers: a pair so well-matched in youth and looks as well to justify apparently the jealous kinsman’s fears.—Harry Rockhurst, stripling just hardening into manhood, keeping some of his boy graciousness in the virility of the newer stage, sunburnt, vigorous; with brown curls tossed back from a broad forehead, and brilliant hazel eyes, keen and bold of vision, as should be those of the noted follower of hounds and hawk: by his side, as tall nearly as her cavalier, Diana Harcourt, the young widow, radiant with the sun on her auburn hair!

As her lover spoke to her, she listened, not unwillingly, and her glance rested on his face with pleasure. Yet there was something well-nigh maternal in this complacence which might have bidden him pause.

“Diana,” the boy cried passionately, “you must hear me; I will speak.”

She moved a pace from him and, sitting down on the bench, drew a hanging branch of wild rose to the wild rose of her cheek.

“The last of my country flowers,” she murmured.

“Stay,” he exclaimed. “Let me pluck you a posy!”

High over their unconscious heads, Lionel Ratcliffe, peering cautiously over the balustrade, had a sneer for the childish eagerness. But Diana took the flowers with a simple grace.

“Thank you, and thank you.… Nay, how sweet they are! And to think that to-morrow evening we shall be so far away. ’Tis hard to leave the garden for the town.”

(“Mark you, now,” whispered Ratcliffe overhead, nipping Hare by the arm, “and take a lesson in Dan Cupid’s ways. ’Twill be: ‘Think of me, and do not forget me!’ And a prate of hopes, and a whisper of pledges. And then the word will hop out like a hot coal, Love! and their little world will be all ablaze—And ’twill be Love … Love … Love, and everything lost if some one be not at hand to spray cold water at the right moment.”

“The garden can?” suggests the practical Ned, in a mouthing undertone.

“Hush! lad,” murmured the other, “hast yet to learn metaphor. Nay—hark! Not a breath, on thy life.”)

“I shall dream, I think, of the gardens of Rockhurst,” Diana was saying.

“The gardens?” echoed Harry. He was leaning against the wall, by the bench, looking down at her, bending close. “Gardens? Is that all you regret, Mistress Harcourt?”

“Fie,” smiled she, “I am not so ungrateful. Shall I not regret my friends, my neighbours, good Mistress Rockhurst, and yourself?”

The boy drew back and straightened himself, galled to the quick.

“My aunt—and me! Truly, I am, madam, I am proud.” He flung himself away, his shoulder turned ostentatiously on Diana. She laughed with indulgence; then sighed. And, in heart-broken fashion, Harry caught up the sigh.

(“First stage, sighs,” reflected the watcher. “’Tis most harmless.”)

Young Rockhurst’s dudgeon was not of long duration. He edged along the wall to the bench and bashfully took seat.

“So ends the year,” he said softly, “that brought me the happiness of paradise—Diana.”

“Master Rockhurst.…”

“Must it end thus?” Suddenly bold, he tried to take the fair hand idly clasping the posy.

“Take care, sir,” she cried mischievously, “there are thorns here.”

“Ah,” he breathed, “so that I might gather the roses.…”

(And above their heads, Lionel Ratcliffe: “Second stage: hand-clasps and protestations. Next will come kneeling work, and next the lips.—Wary now, for it goes rapidly!”)

“Pray you, pray you, Harry!” Diana chid, endeavouring gently to free her hand.

But the boy had slipped the leash of his ardour and was not to be hushed.

“O my sweet life, hear me, hear me!”

“I vow,” she said, half rebuking, “I never knew you in this mood!”

“Ah, I am bold,” he panted. “Must I not be bold indeed for that I dare to love you!” Saying which, he fell on both knees before her.

(“Is’t not time to stop them?” whispered Hare into Ratcliffe’s ear. “I could drop a little stone on sister Di’s head.”

“Soft,” interposed the other, with his contemptuous patience. “Let the children play a little while longer; ’twill be the finer sport to slip in ’twixt cup and lip!”)

In truth, Ratcliffe was beginning to suspect that he had overrated Harry Rockhurst’s influence. If he knew women, his fair cousin, below yonder, had given no real response. He had caught the note of indulgence which the wooer himself was too inexperienced to mark in her accents. True, there might lurk some danger even in this; yet not such as to call for indiscreet interference. He smiled sardonically as the lover’s pleading rose passionately in the air.

“Give me hope, Diana—one word. Ah, madam, give me hope!”

But Mistress Harcourt rose and disengaged herself with some decision from the young man’s grasp.

“Stay, Master Rockhurst, how can I listen to you? In truth, dear lad, you are over young to dream of such matters yet. Why, and what would my Lord Rockhurst say, could he but hear? Indeed, Harry, ’tis undutiful of you, without your noble father’s sanction—I dare swear without even his knowledge.”

“My father!” cried the boy, as if the words had struck him. “Alack,” he added despairingly, “this sudden departure, upon which you have resolved, has thwarted all my plans. Yet, madam, you are wrong; my father does know. I have writ him all my heart.”

Diana turned the pale, fresh beauty of her face full in surprise upon the speaker.

“Aye—have you, indeed?” cried she. “And what says his lordship?”

The youth, emboldened afresh, pressed forward; but she kept him sweetly at arm’s length, menacing him with her posy.

“He has not answered yet—could not have answered yet, madam. Natheless, I am his only child; he loves me: there can be but one answer. Diana, if that be all that stands between us—”

“Nay,” she teased, “and shall I tell you your father’s answer? ‘Ah, Harry’ (will his lordship say), ‘have I kept thee secluded in the country, that thou mightest grow strong in health and virtuous in mind’—for these, we are told, are my Lord Rockhurst’s reasons—‘and hast seen a young gentlewoman for the first time? Pack up, lad, pack and ride with me to London town; and in a week will’t have forgotten her very existence!’”

“How little you know my father … how little you know me!” exclaimed the lover, with dignity.

“Alas, child, this is country innocence. Do I not know something of the ways of the great world! Your education has not yet begun, all respect to his lordship’s judgment. When he has shown you the Court, the town, the quality—”

Harry Rockhurst interrupted her with a vexed laugh:—

“The Court, the town, the quality—why, madam, he will not even tell me of them. ’Tis only his duty as Captain of the King’s Yeomen and Constable of the Tower that keeps him from living here among us—the only life he deems worthy of a true gentleman: that of the owner on his estates. London, he says, is contamination. Therefore keepeth he me here, though it part him and me.”

She smiled and shook her head:—

“And how shall I find favour in the eyes of this strict gentleman?” she said, in the same fond tone of mockery. “I who am gay, and think not so ill of the town, and have no mind for sad faces and dull clothes! I fear me, Harry, your father is at heart a puritan!”

“My lord a puritan,” cried the boy, in fine scorn—“the King’s own private friend in exile, the hero of Worcester’s evil day … why, Diana, villainous Noll set a higher price on my father’s head than upon any other in England, save his most gracious Majesty’s own—sweet Mistress Harcourt, if that were your only fear—”

Greatly daring, he flung out his arm to encircle her. Swayed by his artless passion, Mistress Harcourt suffered the embrace, but it was with a kind of friendly tolerance.

A loud shout from above drove them apart.

“Cousin Di!—where can she be? Cousin Di, Master Rockhurst…!”

There was Lionel Ratcliffe, on the terrace above them, shouting into space through the hollow of his hands; and beside him Edward Hare, consumed with laughter.

Young Rockhurst stamped his foot; but Diana (not displeased, perhaps, at the interruption) glanced calmly up.

“Here I am, Cousin Lionel—and here, as you can see, is Harry.”

Ratcliffe leant across the balustrade, wiping his face as though heated.

“Oh, how I have sought for you!” he called.

“So it seems,” retorted she, ironically, “with apparently never a thought to cast a glance over the wall.”

He grinned. She was the dearer to him for her sharp wits, and for a tongue that was even a match for his own. But what answer he would have made was lost in a new interruption: the sound of a postboy’s horn rose swelling through the quiet airs, and almost immediately the bell clanged from the castle’s gate. Then came calls, shouts, and rumours. Ratcliffe straightened himself from his leaning posture:—

“What have we here?” he cried. “Ha—Mistress Alicia!”

A stout, elderly lady appeared at the head of the terrace steps.

“Pardon me, madam, a moment,” said Harry to Diana, and ran to meet his aunt. The lady was beckoning with great energy:—

“News, lad, news from your noble father, from my dear brother!” She turned on the second step and raised her voice (never a soft one) in vigorous expostulation to some hidden person: “Hither, fellow, hither, thou laggard, and commend thee for a lazy loon!”

Stirred by these expostulations the postboy, covered with dust and sweat, emerged upon the terrace above at a limping run. Harry bounded up the steps to snatch a letter from his hands. He broke the seal and gave a cry of joy:—

“These are news indeed! My father will be with us to-night, nay, toward the fifth hour afternoon, so he writes.—Rascal, you have tarried indeed!—In good truth, these are news!”

His joyful exclamations were lost in a deep outburst of lamentation from Mistress Rockhurst.

“To-day!” quoth she, clapping her palms together. “Murrain take me, if these be not the ways of men! Gilian! Basil!—get thee to the buttery, knave!—Robin! … Robin! the flag!”

But the excellent housewife was not of those who waste their energies upon mere speech. As hastily as her bulk would permit, she was already hying her way back toward the castle. And the clamour of her voice was lost behind the yew hedges. Harry bent over the parapet, calling to Diana, who stood pensively where he had left her.

“Give me joy, madam; my father will be here instantly!”

Ratcliffe brushed past him and came down the steps toward his kinswoman. He laid a hand upon her arm, and looking toward his host:—

“Then,” cried he, “shall we leave you to your filial transport.” He dropped his voice, to continue maliciously, in the young widow’s ear: “Di, what says’t thou? Shall we not ride instantly? Gad, were it but a meeting ’twixt lover and mistress ’twere something to wait for—but this business! ‘My worthy father.… My beloved son!’ ’Twas ever a feast of cold veal, since the days of the prodigal—Though faith,” he laughed, “’tis the father, here, comes from the husks to seek the calf at home!”

And while Diana gazed upon his sharp face with wonder and disfavour, Ratcliffe hailed Rockhurst once more: “Therefore, I say, good Master Harry, pray you bid them call up our horses.”

Young Rockhurst protested. But Diana, to Ratcliffe’s surprise and greatly to his satisfaction, instantly backed the request:—

“Indeed, Lionel is right; our presence is out of place at this meeting.”

“Nay,” implored Harry, and ran headlong down into the Peacock Walk again to catch her hand, “for pity’s sake … no and indeed no, madam.”

The lady disengaged herself, settled her roses, gathered her gloves and whip from the bench and looped her riding skirts. Then she turned, and, smiling, courtesied:—

“Indeed and indeed, yes, sir! And since farewell it must be, why, then, farewell!”

She wafted a kiss from her roses toward him.

“Ah, no!” he implored, still endeavouring to arrest her.

“’Slife!” cried Lionel, impatiently looking up. “There rises the flag … there flies the noble blazon! Let it be the signal for us. Come Di—go, hurry the horses, Ned!” he shouted to Hare, who, astride on the upper balustrade, sat gaping down at them. “Blessings upon the Rakehell,” he muttered to himself, as Diana motioned Harry on one side with decisive gesture.

“Nay, it is good-by,” she was saying.

The boy caught her fingers and the roses together:—

“Oh, madam, will you turn all my joy into sorrow?”

Here the gate-bell clanged again.

“My father,” cried Harry, starting toward the steps.

“Farewell,” said Diana, “and—”

“Ah, no,” cried the poor lover, distractedly, and ran back to fling himself once more before her. “But a few minutes, dearest Diana!”

She hesitated before his distress. Lionel irritably seized her arm.

“Nay, child, you must come!” The touch, the tone were overmasterful. She flashed a haughty look upon him.

“Must! Cousin Lionel?”

Harry, seeing his advantage, pressed it ardently.

“Delay but for five minutes! Sure, ’tis not much to ask!”

“You foolish lad!” said Diana, gently. Then, smiling into the passionate eyes, “Yet I would not seem churl to you. And I will even wait these five minutes in the rose garden yonder. Your arm so far, an it please you, Lionel. But, I pray you, remember that there must be no musts from you to me.”

She moved away with a very stately grace, Lionel, biting his lips upon a bitter smile, walking at her side. Harry stood gazing after her as one lost in a dream.

II
FATHERLY WISDOM

My Lord Rockhurst approached the wall of the upper terrace and looked down upon his son. His countenance, naturally grave, and stamped now with the pallor and fatigue of his lengthy ride, grew graver as he watched. Beside him, his sister threw up scandalised hands. But, as she was about to give voice to her feelings, he arrested her with a gesture, and went slowly to the top of the stairs. There he paused and called,—

“Harry!”

The boy started, wheeled round, rushed up the steps, and dropped on one knee before his father.

“My lord … my dear father!”

Lord Rockhurst raised him, looked a second keenly at the young face; then laying his hand upon his shoulder, walked down with him toward the bench, where, still without speaking, he took seat. Shaking her head at her nephew, Mistress Rockhurst followed them at some distance.

“Oh, sir,” cried Harry, impetuously, “’tis ten months and two days since I last beheld your countenance!”

So saying, he was about to cast himself upon his father’s breast; when, with the faintest motion of the hand, Rockhurst restrained him.

“And yet, didst show, even now, no undue haste to greet me. ’Tis the first time, Harry,” he proceeded in softer tones, “that thou hast failed to welcome me before the gates.… I had looked forward to that moment.”

“And indeed, nevvy,” added Mistress Alicia, as she halted, panting, before him, “’twas not pretty acted. ‘Where’s Harry?’ says his lordship. And ’twas old Giles held the stirrup, which had been thy privilege, Harry, since thou wert five years old.”

Blushes chased each other over the boy’s face. He could but stammer:—

“Oh, sir … oh, father!”

“Nay, no excuses!” bade the Lord Constable.

His son’s cheek grew a darker crimson still.

“The lady, sir,” he murmured, “the lady I wrote of—”

Mistress Rockhurst snorted with increased indignation, but Lord Rockhurst was now smiling dreamily.

“A lady! sayst thou?… Boy Harry and his lady! Nay, then, a petticoat is like charity and must needs cover a multitude of sins!”

“Petticoats, indeed,” ejaculated under her voice the irate dame—“The hussy!”

Lord Rockhurst had no thought to spare for his sister’s opinions just now. Holding Harry at arm’s length, he surveyed him with shining eyes.

“Thou art grown a goodly lad. In faith, well-nigh a man!”

He drew him into his embrace and held him close a second. Then, releasing him, fell back with a sigh of ease upon the bench; flung off his mantle and unbuckled his sword, both of which Harry respectfully received from his hand.

The traveller sighed, took off his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair with the gesture of contented weariness.

“Another drop of cordial, my lord,” cried his sister, rising, all eager for service.

“Nay,” said he, motioning her back; “I have all the cordial I need here, Alicia. Come close, Harry. Dost know,” proceeded the Lord Constable, as his son knelt beside him, “dost know I have ridden two hundred miles these days, with scarce as many minutes’ rest, to put order into thy business? That to-morrow I must e’en be jogging back again, for his Majesty has need of me? Thou presumptuous rogue!” He struck the lad on the shoulder as he spoke, and seriousness underlay his tone of banter. “Wouldst plot to make a grandsire of me already? Mark those pleading eyes, sister.… Even so did they look up at me when he stood no higher than my knee, and it was: ‘Father, John blacksmith has so fair a pony to sell,’ or ‘Giles vows he will drown the red setter pup! O father, I want it!’ Aye, child, thou hast a father, and ’tis well for thee!” His mouth twisted with a light contempt under the upturned moustache. “A widow!” he said.

“Aye,” put in Aunt Alicia vindictively, “and a delicate, fine lady to boot.—Ah, nephew, did I not tell thee his lordship would set order here? What doth Mistress Harcourt care for still-room or buttery? Could she brew a bottle of gilly water? Nay—much less turn thee a pasty—?”

“Peace, peace, sister,” rebuked his lordship. “Harry—” he turned tender, relentless eyes upon his son’s quivering face, “thou, who wouldst get thee to begetting heirs already, what dost thou know of life?”

The youth rose to his feet, withdrew a pace, and looked earnestly at him.

“As much, my lord,” he answered then, “as you have allowed me to know.”

A moment the elder man seemed struck. He gazed down at his linked hands and reflected. Then he, too, got up. It was with an air of finality:—

“Faith, aptly replied! Therefore, son—” he took the lad’s arm, “thou must still believe my will best for thee.”

Harry caught up his father’s hand.

“Nay, my lord, God forbid I should even question the wisdom of your dealings with me! Truly, I have never hankered after the town; and, if I have seen you ride forth alone with a heavy heart, it has only been because of the longing for your gracious company. But, father—” he clasped his other hand over the gloved one he held, “she loves the country, too, let Aunt Alicia say what she will.” He shot a flaming look of reproach at the buxom lady. “And … and, we should be full content to dwell here forever if we were married, sir.”

“Married!” echoed Rockhurst. He pulled his hand from his son’s clasp and passed it caressingly over the beardless chin. “Aye, there’s a cheek for a husband, truly!” (Mistress Alicia broke into good-humoured laughter and struck her knees in applause.) “When thy beard is grown, we’ll talk of such matters again.”

“Oh, my lord,” pleaded the lover. “What of my age?—since you yourself were married when no older than I am, as our Bible leaf shows. Say nothing, at least, till you have seen her! She is here, father, even now, in the rosary! Alack, she has ridden hither to bid farewell, for to-morrow she sets out for London town. And, oh, father, may I not escort her?”

“To London!” exclaimed the father. His face grew dark with a heavy frown. “To London! No, sir, not within fifty miles of the Babylon! How now, art grown so bold?”

“I thought not of the town,” stammered Harry; “I thought but of the perils of the road for her.” Then, gaining assurance, he proceeded: “Even here there is talk of Claud Du Vall and such bold ruffians. Sir Edward, her brother … Sir Edward, in truth, is a poor fool, my lord—And Mr. Ratcliffe, her cousin, who rides with them, him I mightily mistrust. You have given me your blood, father—will you blame me now because it will not run obediently when I think of danger to my lady?”

“Nay, if thy body kept pace with thy spirit,” mocked Rockhurst, “what a beard wouldst soon have, my callow son!” Yet, though he mocked, anger had fled from his glance to be replaced by fatherly pride.

The tears rose to Harry’s eyes. The young can endure severity better than irony.

“Indeed, I am a child no longer,—I am ever your dutiful son, sir,—but I cannot give up Diana. My lord, do but see her; see her now…!”

“Now?” cried the other, surprised. Then recollecting himself: “True, didst say she was in the garden.” His eye grew ever more indulgent. “See her, lad,” he went on, “aye, truly. For what other purpose had I ridden all these weary miles?”

With the youth, all was once more sunshine, where, before, there had been but clouds.

“Ah, father, I knew your indulgence would never fail me. Nay, I will conduct her to you, on the instant.”

He started to run, as he spoke. Rockhurst watched the figure out of sight, then laughed low to himself and turned to his sister.

“I will conduct her to you, on the instant,” he repeated. “Aha—and doubtless the pretty widow will come as meekly at his bidding to display herself as ever heifer to the fair. O rustica simplicitas!” And laughing, he came back to the bench and sat down.

“Indeed, my lord,” said Mistress Alicia, with as much disapproval as she dared to show to the head of the house, “here is no matter for laughing. ’Tis an excellent thing, my lord, that you should forbid Harry from marrying the Widow Harcourt. And truly, as you say, he’s not fit to wed for some four or five years to come. And, of a certainty, she’s scarce the woman to manage a household like this, brother; not such as I should care to trust with the keys. And I think you’ll not refuse me the credit to say, brother, that I have become them well these five years. Since, with his Majesty’s most happy Restoration, your lordship also has come to your own again, and placed me at the head of your house—I trust, I say, I have become the charge.”

“Indeed, none better,” said Rockhurst, absently.

The lady glanced at him sidelong. Her comely face took an air of indecision, almost of timidity, foreign to the massive severity of its lines. Something she had on her mind, that yet she feared to utter. But lack of courage could never be the failing of a Rockhurst.

“And, indeed, my lord, so long as you keep the lad mewed up here, as if he were a girl, ’tis not to be expected that he should get rid of such like maggots in his head. Why, the town’s the place for a gallant young gentleman like Harry. Your only son, my lord, your heir! Think on it. Why, Court’s the place for him, and you so rarely in his Majesty’s favour! He’d sing another song there, I warrant you.”

Once again the father’s face grew dark.

“’Tis my bird, sister; I’ll have him sing the song I choose.”

“But surely, brother,” argued the doughty lady, scarlet in the face, “with you to watch over him, with your example—”

“With my example!” He turned suddenly and fiercely on his sister: “No, by the Lord, not even with such valuable aid as that, will I trust my fine lad into that sink—that charnel-house—that pit! Ah, you think yourself so wise, and prate of what you know not—poor innocent old country virgin. I tell thee, woman, the taint is in the very air. Eyes, ears, nay, every pore, are channels for the poison—”

“Brother!” ejaculated Mistress Rockhurst, huffed and startled.

But Rockhurst proceeded, his eyes fixed more as if talking to himself than to her:—

“There, shame grows dearer than merit—vice becomes as a cloak, warm and soft, in which a man takes comfort. At the mere thought of cold virtue, of stern duty, of naked purity, ugh! we shiver and hug ourselves—”

His sister gave a faint, shocked cry, and flung out her hand:—

“But not you, not you, my lord! Surely these are strange words.”

“Harry shall be a man of better stuff,” the father cried. “He’s wholesome now, body and soul, and by the Lord, I say, I’ll keep him so! How now, Alicia, shall I not have pure-blooded, pure-hearted grandchildren, an I have the mind?”

For some unknown reason the excellent lady took deep umbrage at this last remark.

“Surely, surely!” she repeated, tossing her head, so that her grey curls danced.

“So let it be, then,” bade her brother. Then, in a changed voice he exclaimed:—

“Hush, now, here comes the country widow. Faith, the lad hath taste.”

But here he fell suddenly silent and sprang up. Mistress Rockhurst, surveying him in some anxiety, marked the extraordinary change that came over his countenance.

“As I am a sinful woman” (she afterward told her special gossip), “his lordship turned whey-white. And I do assure you, madam, his eyes blazed in his head—the like of which I have never seen before. ’Twas almost as if he and she had known each other and had never dreamed to meet again. And as for my fine young madam, she came along with her eyes on the ground—nay, the most bashful thing between this and York City. But when she looks up and sees my lord, as white as he went, she goes rosy, and, please you, gives a kind of cry with both her hands outstretched. That may have been artfulness. And if so, my lord met it even as I could have wished; for he but made her a deep bow, and, says he presently, in his very grand way, ‘It gives me pleasure, madam, to make your acquaintance.’ At which you should have seen how was taken aback the widow! ‘Make your acquaintance’ (mark me), says he, which shows he could not have known her before, after all.”

Harry, who had brought his lady in such pride beneath his father’s glance, stood somewhat dashed in the silence that followed Lord Rockhurst’s ceremonious greeting. By nature the most unsuspicious of youths, in his simple existence he had never felt the necessity of studying inner motives in those around him. He knew the tricks of bird and beast, but the secrets of his fellow-creatures he guessed not at. And so all the tokens that his aunt’s shrewd eye had noted were lost upon him. His father had been a trifle over-ceremonious toward a fair neighbour, let alone the mistress of his son’s heart. And she, his dear love, had blushed and grown pale, as was but natural.

“Well, sir,” he cried at last, anxiously, “now that you have seen Mistress Harcourt, do you not give me some reason?”

His father turned a singular glance upon him.

“Reason enough, lad,” he said, under his breath, “reason enough for any folly!”

Diana’s clear cheek had now resumed its usual pretty tint; but as her young lover spoke, it deepened; and at Rockhurst’s words, faded again slightly.

“Nay, my lord,” said she, speaking for the first time—her voice was low and troubled—“I know not what Master Harry hath been saying of me. It is his kindness that he will think so well of me, and—nay, I must say it, Harry—’tis his foolishness that he will not understand that he is over-kind.”

Rockhurst took Diana’s hand from his son’s hold, where it still rested unconsciously. Many thoughts were in his mind, as strangely conflicting as the forces in his nature. His keen knowledge of women and their ways told him that no woman who loved a man would have let her fingers lie so listlessly in his grasp. “My poor lad—she has no heart for him,” cried the father in him. But the man in him, as yet unsubdued by years or sorrow, rejoiced. Here was one who, nameless to him, had yet shone like a star in his troubled sky this many a month, for the sake of one hour, snatched, sweet, pure, sacred, out of an unworthily spent life. With all that was best in him, he had wished to keep her unknown, unattainable; and here she was, brought back by fate into his path!

No one could have guessed at the storm seething within him after his moment of self-betrayal. His usual polished composure governed face, voice, and gesture.

“My son has told me much about you, madam, truly,” he was saying; “and yet I see how little he has been able to tell me.”

’Twas the merest idle compliment. The words were as artificial as the tone. Diana courtesied in silence. Not thus did she remember her grave, chivalrous protector in an hour of doubt and peril. Nay, then, that memory had best be effaced from her mind, since it was his pleasure to deny it. Perchance (and the thought was more galling to her pride!) though she had so fondly kept his image in the deep recesses of her soul, hers had already faded from his thoughts.

“Indeed, my lord,” she began, rallying her spirits, “I too—” but she paused, for her brother and Lionel Ratcliffe were approaching, the latter with his cool air of indifference, the other all agape with curiosity.

Harry instantly took the younger man by the arm to present him to his father.

“One moment,” rebuked Rockhurst; “the lady is speaking. Pray, madam?”

“Oh, my lord,” said she, with formal grace, “the poor sentence was, certes, never worth such courteous attention. I was but about to say that I, too, have heard of your lordship often.”

“Aye? From what source?” he asked, and a shadow fell on his face.

But she was smiling.

“From this source,” she answered him, waving her roses toward Harry.

“Ah,” cried Rockhurst, laughing upon a sigh, “no doubt the rogue has full wearied you with the subject.”

“Alas,” she responded quickly, “must I not take this reproach to myself?”

Lionel Ratcliffe pulled young Rockhurst by the sleeve.

“What, all agaze and bewildered, Harry? Never fear, these are but Court wits in a friendly bout. Clink, clink, the sparks fly. But, hark to you, beware an unfoiled weapon.”

The boy withdrew from his touch with disfavour, and Rockhurst turned upon the whisperer a haughty look of enquiry.

“Well met again, my lord,” cried Ratcliffe, swaggering a step forward and saluting with a cavalier sweep of his hat.

Rockhurst returned the courtesy with a ceremonious inclination.

“Have we met before, sir?” he enquired.

No whit abashed, Ratcliffe replaced his felt with the very latest twist of the wrist.

“Does your lordship make it a practice, then, of not taking your memory out of town? To be sure, memory is a mighty inconvenient chattel at times. Natheless, ’tis a fact your lordship and my humble self have met at the same board. Did I not share with your lordship, last winter, the privilege of being the guest of the pretty Mantes?”

“Enough—I remember you, sir,” said his lordship.

“Egad,” laughed Ratcliffe, with elaborate geniality, “I, sure, did take special note of your lordship, that night, seeing you with the nymph, our hostess, whom, I mind me, you had but just whisked from under the very nose of Jove. Nay, not the first time (if report spoke truly) that Old Rowley has been cut out by the Rake—”

The words were arrested on his lips by a look as sharp as a sword:—

“You have too long a memory, sir. Shorten it.—My son,” added the speaker, turning his shoulder upon Ratcliffe, “you were about to introduce the young gentleman to me.”

“My brother, Sir Edward Hare, my lord,” said Diana, forestalling her lover.

The interlude with Ratcliffe had perturbed the group; and with gracious instinct she sought to cover her cousin’s insolence and young Rockhurst’s rising anger at insinuations incomprehensible to country dwellers, yet the hostile intent of which was but too transparent. Sir Edward, however, was far from assisting her purpose.

“Nay, brother, brother,” she whispered, as the bumpkin nodded sulkily. “Doff thy hat.”

“I tell thee, Di,” murmured the injured youth, “’tis he owes me two bows and a scrape. Ecod: ‘the lady’s speaking,’ quotha! And I with my best leg already drawn out for him!”

“Your lordship must excuse our rustic manners,” said Diana, with a pretty glance, half humorous, half pleading.

Rockhurst looked at her a second musingly.—Yes, grace, youth, sweetness, all were hers! And fate had so worked that it was she who was to embody his son’s young love dream! Dear lad … small blame to him! He gave an unconscious sigh. To his countenance came back that air of kindness which Harry had missed in it so singularly since the meeting with Diana.

“Of your leave, my son,” said he, then, “I will have a few minutes’ converse with Mistress Harcourt apart.”

Harry pressed his father’s hand in delighted response. He leant back against the sunny wall and watched his mistress go in grace beside the stately figure of the great Lord Rockhurst. Lionel took place beside him, and from narrowed lids looked smilingly at the young man’s happy countenance.

Mistress Rockhurst, who, solemnly seated at the end of her bench, had been a silent yet mightily observant witness of the whole scene, now, suddenly struck by the discontented expression of Edward Hare’s visage, addressed the youth:—

“What ails ye, Sir Edward?”

“I’m sick at stomach,” growled the candid baronet. “I hate a peacock.”

“Yet peacock is light fare,” said the lady, with a twinkle in her shrewd blue eye. “Sick at stomach, say you? There’s nothing better than a cup of marjoram water.”

Sir Edward flung the suggestion from him:—

“Water? Ugh!”

“When I say water,” amended she, “’tis strong water, aqua vitÆ.”

“Aye,” quoth he, then, “that’s another matter. I’m not saying but a tass of it would warm the innards.”

She despised him heartily for a monstrous poor scion of a noble family; yet the housewife was too strong in her to resist the pleasure of ministering out of her store, even to an unworthy guest. She rose, chuckling, jingling her keys:—

“Oh, surely, surely,” she exclaimed, “this small comfort shall not be denied you here, Sir Edward. Come but with me.”

III
THE NEW FRENCH PASS

Rockhurst and Diana, at the extreme end of the terrace, stood alone in the sunshine, with the June roses about them.—How much more apart now than on that night in the snow between the black fir trees and the waste heath! She flung a sudden, eager look at him; but before the smooth courtesy with which he turned to her, drew back into herself, once more checked and puzzled. It was to be as if they had only met in a dream? So be it! Then the thought that he must now regard her as his son’s choice broke upon her in a flash of revelation—and anger. Why had she dallied with such folly? With an involuntary movement she loosened her grasp on Harry’s roses and they fell round her feet.

“Why, madam,” said Rockhurst, with a forced smile and a perfunctory solicitude, “your posy, madam, all in the dust! Nay, permit me to cull another for you.”

The man of the world had superseded all else. To place his years in rivalry with his son’s youth, the King’s Lord Constable against the country lad? Preposterous!

Lionel Ratcliffe stood attentively watching his kinswoman from afar. Beside him, Harry sat, dreaming, his young eyes fixed on God knows what golden vision. All at once the elder man tapped his companion stealthily on the arm.

“What is it?” cried Harry, starting from his muse and glancing round none too pleasantly. “What is it now?” quoth he, frowning.

“Look, look yonder, Master Rockhurst. Your roses.”

Harry’s glance followed the direction of the pointing finger. He saw Diana stand, a radiant vision in the amber light, with empty hands outstretched toward the flower that Rockhurst was in the act of gathering, a deep crimson rose that glowed like a ruby in the sun-rays. And about her feet the pale, sweet blossoms chosen for her with such love, but an hour ago! The red rose was carried to Diana’s cheek; and then she fastened it in her bosom. His flowers had not been so honoured. He could not think or reason; he could only look and suffer.

Again Lionel tapped him on the shoulder. He was smiling. Harry came back to his senses at sight of that odious smile.

“Well, sir, and what of it?” he cried, measuring Ratcliffe with a defiant look.

“What of it? More than you think.—What were you about, young man,” his voice sunk to a whisper, “when you invited Rakehell Rockhurst to come and view your lady?”

“Rakehell Rockhurst…!” echoed Harry in utter amazement. Then, fury leaping to his voice and eye, he wheeled fiercely upon Ratcliffe: “Of whom, sir, are you speaking?”

The latter proceeded, unmoved save for a trifle more of emphasis in his silky tone:—

“Did you not know that a single breath of his lips is enough to tarnish the virtue of the purest woman in England?”

The younger man fell back a step, and measured the speaker:—

“Of whom are you talking, I have asked you.”

There was more self-control in his demeanour, but more danger. It was tense with menace, like a bent bow. A second Ratcliffe paused. He had not given the lad credit for so much real manliness. The more reason for him to precipitate the crisis for which he was working; the crisis which might rid him of two rivals at once—for the courtly Rockhurst was indeed a rival to be reckoned with. And there was no affectation in the passion with which he now broke out:—

“Of whom, good lad? Of whom?——”

(Edward Hare, strolling out of the dim coolness of the buttery into the sunshine again, heard the sound of loud voices rising from the terrace below. Grinning, he advanced on tiptoe and bent over the parapet to listen. Cousin Ratcliffe and young Harry were at it at last! Even to his dull wits it had been evident that the quarrel that had long been smouldering between them was bound to break into open flame. Better than a wench or a bottle, better even than cockpit or bear-bait, Sir Edward loved the sight of a fight between his fellow-men. He chuckled as he hearkened.)

“Of whom, good lad, of whom—but the most noble Viscount, in town the incomparable libertine, his Majesty’s merry friend, known by Whitehall as Rakehell Rockhurst—in the country, thy sainted father! Aye, but, town or country, let Rockhurst get to windward of a pretty woman, and the devil will soon show his—”

Harry had stood a moment petrified, but before the last words were out he had struck Lionel on the lips:—

“Liar!”

Lionel staggered back; a narrow streak of blood was running down his chin. In a second he had whipped out the light riding sword that hung by his hip, and without a word made a deadly rush. Harry, however, strong country lad, trained by all the sudden accidents of sport and chase, had his wits about him. He stepped aside from the onslaught, caught up the cloak which lay on the balustrade, and flung it across the blade.

“Now, if you please,” said he, shaking his father’s sword free of the scabbard, whilst Ratcliffe, almost foaming at the mouth, struggled with the encumbering folds as if it had been his enemy himself, “let us continue the argument.”

It was a prettier fight than ever it had been Edward Hare’s luck to behold at feast or fair. In an ecstasy he hung over the parapet, jumping from one foot to the other.

“Sh! Sh!” he shouted, “at it, good dogs! Ecod, I would not have missed this for forty crowns! Ha, well pushed, cousin!”

Young Harry staggered, waved his sword aimlessly, then dropped it, pivoted on himself, and fell. He lay, face downward, and after a moment a coil of blood, like a slender serpent, began to move sinuously into the grey of the gravel.

The peacock, from his perch, peered down on the scene with stupid eyes, cocking its tufted head inanely from side to side.

The approving smile was petrified on Edward Hare’s face. He clapped his hand over his mouth like a frightened child.

“Dead, ecod!” he whispered to himself. Then, hanging further over the wall, he hailed Ratcliffe in a quavering shout:—

“Hist, coz—hast never killed him?”

The victor, leaning on his weapon, gazing in sombre abstraction at the prostrate form, started and looked up. He smiled hideously with his swollen lip.

“Be it mortal?” mouthed Edward again.

Ratcliffe answered stonily:—

“Mortal? I trust so. The affront was mortal.”

Then he slowly wiped his blade upon the cloak, sheathed it with care, and walked steadily away, along the path that led to the valley.

Hare watched him go, till the dark laurel bushes received and hid him. Then he looked over again at the motionless figure, and in a panic, sent loud calls ringing into the air: “Help here! Hoy—Hello! Master Rockhurst hurt, ill,—dead! Help!”

Rockhurst was the first to hear the cry. In a trice he was back in the Peacock Walk, kneeling by the bench. Hare was at his heels, gabbling his tale. Half his words went unheeded, but some found their mark in the father’s heart:—

“And Lionel says: ‘Rakehell Rockhurst’ (he, he!). ‘A devil with the women!’ says he. And Harry hits him across the mouth. ‘Liar!’ says Harry. Oh, ’twas a pretty quarrel. ’Twas a cracking slap!—”

As Rockhurst lifted his boy and supported him in his arms, light came back to the eyes so dark in the white face, and, stretching himself, Harry returned to consciousness and smiled up at his father like a waking child. Rockhurst tore the stained clothing apart with fierce hands, then drew a deep sigh of relief. His experience in such matters took stock of the wound—an ugly tear in truth, long, laying bare the ribs, but not deep.

“’Tis not vital—thank God! Go, call for help, man!” cried he sharply, looking up at the staring Edward. And off trotted the lout. Now came Diana, hastening, bewildered.

Lovers have quick ears: through the dimness of his returning consciousness Harry caught the sound of her steps. He tried to raise himself in his father’s embrace. There was a sudden shame upon him that he had done so womanish a thing as to swoon, this day when, of all days, he had so much reason to play the man.

“’Tis a mere scratch, my lord,” he murmured. Then, with an anxious glance on his father’s face, he added, stammering: “Master Lionel was showing me a new French pass, and I—I slipped—” He broke off; never before had he seen tears in his father’s eyes.

With a flutter like that of a settling bird, Diana sank on her knees beside them. With a soft cry, full of ruth, she took her boy lover’s hand. As he had passed her, running on Lord Rockhurst’s errand, her brother had bellowed his tidings:—

“A pretty quarrel! About you, sister! Ecod—there was talk about your virtue—and Master Harry’s slap, and Coz Lionel out with his tuck—”

As with the sting of arrows the words drove her forward. Ah, she needed no further telling to conjure up the scene: her kinsman had spoken lightly of her and her young lover had struck back the insult. Her boy lover! His youth, that had been his disability in her eyes, now became eloquent to plead for him. To see him lie there, pale and blood-stained, a mere lad.—After the way of women, on the moment her heart melted all to him.

“Harry, Harry! …” she cried, and the words were tender as a caress.

Harry turned his languid head.

“And now I cannot ride with you to-morrow—not even did my lord so permit! Father…!” Faintness was creeping over him again, but he made an effort. His voice rang out: “Father, will you escort her? My Diana!”

It was at once a supreme declaration of confidence and a solemn charge. The father bowed his head.

“Your Diana, lad, so be it—I accept the trust.”

Over the poor wounded body the eyes of Rakehell Rockhurst met those of Diana. There was a steady sweetness of renunciation in his, that she had seen there once before. Hers were quickly veiled again, lest they betray the singular, sharp pain that filled her heart.

At her swiftest gait, important, yet showing no alarm, Mistress Rockhurst advanced, followed by a couple of wenches, bearing varied paraphernalia. She had lived through the wars—it were a parlous wound indeed she could not cope with. In her own hands she carried a flask of renowned cordial. None too soon, it seemed, for the colour on the pretty boyish head lying between Rockhurst and Diana was fading fast again.

THE KING’S CUP