Just at this time Rose Westel met with an adventure. She was paying a long-promised visit to some distant relatives at Ely. It was a great event in her life, for it was the first time she had left her home. Any change from the dull routine at the Bury was welcome, and yet, after the first excitement died down, she found herself unhappier than ever. The sight of Ely Castle proudly rearing its towers over the lowlands awakened in her a bitter discontent. The great grim pile stirred curious passions within her breast; there were times when she looked on it with an icy dread at her heart, for behind those curving walls rippled the waters of the moat—her mother's deathbed; there were moments when she looked on it with a secret pride that she should be descended from one of its haughty rulers. Then she would give way to frantic rage that she should not be there presiding as its mistress. It was common talk that the present Baron was only the illegitimate son of her father's brother. Why, then, had he been chosen instead of her, who stood nearer in the succession?

No one suspected her of these outbursts, for she indulged in them only where she was unobserved. This habit had grown on her since she was a little tot, and her pride had kept her from showing how keenly she felt the shrugs and significant glances of the former companions of her mother. Their prophecies concerning her future were obvious, her own idleness and wilfulness being thrown into high relief by the contrasting industry and self-sacrifice of her cousin Matilda. There had been times when she had tried her best to hate Matilda, who was always being held up to her as a model, but Matilda's own love and admiration for her made it impossible.

So for many years she had alternated between tempestuous fits of determination to fulfil the kind prophecies of her mother's generation—to be out and out wicked and have done with it—and sullen resolutions to take the veil and enter the neighboring convent. The grewsome picture of her mother's waterlogged body floating on the moat had kept her from the one, a certain leer on the Father Confessor's face had kept her from the other. She never explained to any one why she had left off going to confession, for what would have been the use? They would have said that she had inherited her mother's wickedness, so that even saints were tempted by her. She would never be judged as other maids.

Again and again she asked herself why had her mother sinned? It was her refusal to wed either of the two fellows whom her overlord had chosen for her that brought her to the Baron's notice. On seeing her he ceased to insist upon that special prerogative. What right had her mother to shrink from the churls that had been allotted to her? Her sin was so unnecessary that Rose looked on it with bitter impatience. The thick-flowing blood of the rustics had been in her veins; she should have been well content to wed some great bullock of a fellow and bear him countless stolid, flaxen-haired children. What right had she to bring into the world a being with every taste different from those about her, with every nerve tingling with revolt? True, Rose herself felt that she would knife a man before she would mate with one of those great hulks of men who were little above the oxen they drove or the sheep they tended. But she had the right to shudder; gentle blood flowed in her veins just as truly as it did in the proud Baron yonder. Just as much as he, she had a right to feel her heart leap within her at the sight of luxury and daintiness and beauty. How her hands longed to feel the touch of soft furs and velvets and rich stuffs! Oh, again and again she wished that her mother had flung her babe also on the moat.

As she was sitting alone one day underneath the trees, near the highway, she was startled by the approach of a gay cavalcade bringing color and life and laughter into the gloomy woods. First rode the Baron, usually a superb figure on his magnificent coal-black horse, but now a most ridiculous figure with his clothes put on wrong side forward, his hat tilted over his nose, and long streamers of different colored ribands hanging from his beard, down his breast, and along his legs, where also hung numerous tiny bells tinkling with every motion. His horse was decorated as fantastically as its master, and behind him followed two score of lusty fellows decked out in motley liveries of green and yellow and covered with scarves and ribands and laces hung all over with gold. From each of these jangled and dangled countless silvern bells, heightening the din made by the pipers and drummers that followed, playing weird discords like a devil's dance. A number of ladies with their gallants, all masked and gayly costumed, now rode up, all shrieking with laughter.

As the Baron caught sight of Rose standing near the road, gazing at the unwonted sight in open bewilderment, there swept into his eyes that look with which all men greeted her beauty. He whispered a command to one of his lackeys, who instantly seized the girl and conducted her to the Baron, who gazed down on her amazed—for how could it be that he had overlooked such a rare beauty in his vicinity? For the moment he regretted the escapade that made him cut so ridiculous a figure in her eyes.

"Thou must proclaim thyself a follower of my Lord of Misrule," he said, smiling down at her and lifting up her chin with one gauntleted hand. She did not reply, but gazed on the ground in embarrassment, the color going and coming in her cheeks.

"Look, girl," spoke up one of the Baron's companions, "none may encounter us save they wear my Lord's badge," and with a leer, he attempted to fasten a knot of ribands on the girl's kerchief. She made a quick gesture of impatience and stepped back angrily, but at a low word from the Baron she paused, and turned her exquisite profile toward him.

"Wilt refuse my badge?" he asked softly. She turned her face to him and curtsied, answering readily:—

"I need not that to make me a humble servant of your Lordship;" but her lips trembled and the blood was pumping noisily about her ears, and she found she could speak only in a strained whisper.

Some of the ladies clapped their hands at her readiness, and the Baron, with a light laugh, sprang from his horse and pinned on the badge, taking as long to do so as he possibly could, while the others looked on in amusement and made audible comments, even the ladies chuckling over the coarse badinage that was bandied about.

"Two groats for the badge, girl," cried one saucy fellow as the Baron at last reluctantly took his hands from the girl, and stood off in mock admiration of his own handiwork, "two groats!"

"I have no money," exclaimed Rose, sullenly. The interruption had jarred upon her. For a brief space she had fancied herself and the Baron alone in the world. De Leaufort turned angrily upon the fellow. "Who speaks of payment to a comely maid," he demanded.

"Ay, by St. Clara, a beauty like her needs no groat in her pocket, for she carries payment ever in her face," spoke up another fellow, who had been watching the scene with considerable amusement. "I see the end of poor Lillian's reign," he muttered in his beard.

The Baron threw an arm about Rose's waist, and, drawing her to him, pressed a quick hot kiss on her lips. "I am richly paid," he cried, as she sprang from him and bounded off through the woods.

"Richly indeed!" echoed a couple of envious ones.

"And doubtless the treasury is not yet exhausted," laughed one who knew the Baron was not one to let such a beauty lightly slip through his fingers.

For an instant de Leaufort looked ruefully after the girl. She had not seemed to him a girl that would resent a kiss. At a whisper from a companion, however, he smiled, nodded his head, sprang into the saddle, and a moment later nothing but a cloud of dust rose where the gay cavalcade had rested. On they proceeded with a great din and racket, bringing out from every door they passed heads that shook with disapproval over the light-hearted gayety of the rich folks, and their careless misusing of fineries and good clothes, while the poor had to groan and sweat even for such poor rags as they could find to cover their nakedness.

With the queer contradictions of maidenhood, which yearns and spurns all of a breath, Rose fled to her friends only to announce her sudden determination to return to the Bury the very next day. To all their pleas to persuade her to remain, she was obdurate, although a voice deep down within her pleaded their cause with even far greater eloquence than they could command. Indeed, no one could have been more surprised than herself at the sudden resolution. She had passed hours before the castle picturing all sorts of wild, impossible situations with herself as the heroine and the Baron as the hero, and yet, now that something had really happened, she ran away. There was a certain look in the Baron's eyes as his beard had swept across her cheek that told her with unfailing instinct that he would not lightly let her go from him. An exultant subconsciousness told her that, until he found her, there would be no woman in the world for him. And yet she was fleeing from him even as the startled stag at the scent of danger throws back its antlers and leaps through the forest. She questioned her own decision as impatiently as did her friends. She did not quite understand herself. Was there deep down a desire to show her power, to heighten her charm, by giving him a little trouble in finding her? She could not say. She was not sure that she was not playing with her conscience and making a pretence of saving her soul. She knew only that a wild desire to run away possessed her, one too strong to be withstood. She merely obeyed her reigning impulse as she had done all her life. With the morrow a new one might come and then there would be plenty of time to yield to that.