“I fear the same is true of all women,” answered Frances, with a sigh.  “If a woman could but say to her heart, ‘Thou shalt’ and ’Thou shalt not,’ there would be fewer unhappy women in this world.”

“Oh, do you, too, know that awful truth?” exclaimed Nelly, eagerly bringing her hands to Frances’s shoulders.  “Tell me all about it.  There is nothing sweeter than to hear the troubles of a friend.  They help to make our own seem smaller.  Tell me.”

“I cannot,” answered Frances, now as woebegone as Nelly herself.  “It is too terrible even to think upon, yet I think of nothing else.  A woman may love a man to the point of madness and still hate him.”

“But it is not the king you love?” cried Nelly, in alarm.

“No, no, Nelly.  You have my word.  But let us talk of something else,” answered Frances.

“No, no, let us talk about you,” insisted Nelly, whose curiosity was equalled only by her good nature.

“Not another word,” returned Frances.  “Don’t you want to go to the barge for a ride on the river?” And Nelly eagerly assented.

When they were seated in the barge, Nelly’s waterman asked her where he should take them, and she proposed going to the Bridge, leaving the barge at the Bridge stairs, and walking up Gracious Street to the Old Swan Tavern for dinner.  Frances liked the plan and accepted Nelly’s invitation to dinner—­and to trouble.

CHAPTER V

THE FIGHT AT THE OLD SWAN

On the way down to the Bridge, inquisitive, irresistible Nelly drew out of Frances a meagre statement of her case.  Although Nelly could not write her own name, she was excellent at putting two and two together, and on this occasion quickly reached the conclusion that there was a man whom Frances had good reason to hate, but loved.

Without suspecting that Roger Wentworth’s death bore any relation to Frances’s trouble, Nelly soon began asking questions about the tragedy, and learned that Frances had recognized one of the highwaymen.  When Frances refused in a marked and emphatic manner to describe the man she had seen, or to speak of him beyond the first mention, Nelly began again with her two-and-two problem, and, as the result of her second calculation, reached the conclusion that the highwayman Frances had recognized and the man she loved and hated were one and the same person.  However, Nelly had the good taste to keep the result of her calculations to herself, and dropped the subject which seemed so distasteful to her companion.

When Frances and Nelly reached the landing at the water stairs just above the Bridge, they left their barge and walked up Gracious Street (called by some Grace Church Street, though, in fact, it should be Grass Church Street) to the Old Swan Tavern on the east side of the street, a little above Eastcheap.