bold defiance of the implacable Peter in the forest near to the Brotherhood, John was by no means desirous that the fact of Raymond’s residence at the Rectory of St. Nicholas should become known at Basildene.  Without sharing to the full the fears of the country people with regard to the occult powers of the father and son in that lonely house, John believed them to be as cruel and unscrupulous a pair as ever lived, even in those half-civilized times.  He therefore charged his servants to say nothing of Raymond’s visit, and hoped that it would not reach the ears of the Sanghursts.

But there was another person towards whom Raymond’s fancy had sometime strayed during the years of his absence from Guildford, and this person he was unaccountably shy of naming even to John, though he would have been quite unable to allege a reason for his reticence.

But fortune favoured him in this as in other matters, for on entering the library one day after a short stroll around the Rector’s garden, he found himself face to face with a radiant young creature dressed in the picturesque riding gear of the day, who turned to him with a beaming smile as she cried: 

“Ah!  I have been hearing of thee and of thy prowess, my fair young sir.  My good brother Alexander, who has followed the King’s banner, would gladly have been in thy place on the day of Crecy.  Thou and thy brother were amongst that gallant little band who fought around the Prince and bore him off the field unhurt.  Did not I say of thee that thou wouldst quickly win thy knighthood’s spurs?  And thou mightest already have been a belted knight if thy prudence and thy modesty had not been greater than thine ambition.  Is it not so?”

Raymond’s face glowed like a child’s beneath the praises of Mistress Joan Vavasour, and the light of her bright eyes seemed fairly to dazzle him.  John came to the rescue by telling Raymond’s own version of the story; and then he eagerly asked Joan of herself and what had become of her these past years, for he had seldom seen her, and knew not where she was living nor what she was doing —­ knew not even if she were wedded, nor if Peter Sanghurst’s suit were at an end or had been crowned by success.

At the sound of that name the girl’s face darkened quickly, and a spark of fire gleamed in her eyes.

“Talk not of him,” she said; “I would that he were dead!  Have I not said that I would never wed him, that I would die first?  Fair fortune hath befriended me in this thing.  Thou knowest perchance that my father and brother have been following the King’s banner of late, first in Flanders and then in France.  My mother and I meantime have not been residing at Woodcrych, but in London, whither all news of the war is first known, and where travellers from the spot are like to come.  We are here but for a short space, to spend the merry Yuletide season with my mother’s brother, who lives, as thou knowest, within the town