Late that night he called me to his room.  He had been drinking during the evening and was poised between good-humored hilarity and ill-tempered ferocity.  The latter condition was usually the result of his libations.  When I entered the room it was evident he was amused.

“Did you ever hear or see such brazen effrontery?” he asked, referring to Dorothy’s treatment of the Stanleys.  “Is there another girl on earth who would have conceived the absurd thought, or, having conceived it, would have dared to carry it out?”

I took a chair and replied, “I think there is not another.”

“I hope not,” continued Sir George.  He sat in thought for a moment, and then broke forth into a great laugh.  When he had finished laughing he said:  “I admit it was laughable and—­and pretty—­beautiful.  Damme, I didn’t know the girl could do it, Malcolm!  I didn’t know she had it in her.  There is not another girl living could have carried the frolic through.”  Then he spoke seriously, “But I will make her smart for it when the queen leaves Haddon.”

“Sir George, if you will allow me to suggest what I feel on the subject, I would say that you have no reason whatever for desiring to make Dorothy smart.  She may have deeper designs than we can see.”

“What designs do you suppose she can have?  Tell me, Malcolm,” asked Sir George.

I remained silent for a moment, hardly knowing how to express my thought.  “Certainly she could not have appeared to a better advantage than in her tavern maid’s costume,” I said.

“That is true,” answered Sir George.  “Though she is my own daughter, I must admit that I have never seen any woman so beautiful as she.”  The old gentleman laughed softly for a moment and said:  “But wasn’t it brazen?  Wasn’t it shameless?  I have always given the girl credit for modesty, but—­damme, damme—­”

“Her beauty in the tavern maid’s costume fired Leicester’s heart as nothing else could have done,” I said.  “He stood by my side, and was in raptures over her charms.”

Sir George mused a moment and said something about the “Leicester possibility,” which I knew to be an impossibility, and before I left him he had determined to allow the matter to drop for the present.  “I am making a damned pretty mess of the whole affair, I fear, Malcolm,” he said.

“You don’t seem to be clearing it up, Sir George,” I responded.

After talking over some arrangements for the queen’s entertainment, I said good night, and left my cousin brooding over as complicated a problem as man ever tried to solve.

The next morning I told Dorothy how her father felt with respect to the “Leicester possibility.”  She laughed and said:—­

“I will encourage father in that matter, and,” with a saucy twinkle in her eye, “incidentally I will not discourage my proud lord of Leicester.  I will make the most of the situation, fear not, Malcolm.”

“I do not fear,” said I, emphatically.