Mistress Anne, having led her to this fruitful subject, would sit and listen, bending over her embroidery frame with strange emotions, causing her virgin breast to ache with their swelling.  She would lie awake at night thinking in the dark, with her heart beating.  Surely, surely there was no other man on earth who was so fitted to Clorinda, and to whom it was so suited that this empress should give her charms.  Surely no woman, however beautiful or proud, could dismiss his suit when he pressed it.  And then, poor woman, her imagination strove to paint the splendour of their mutual love, though of such love she knew so little.  But it must, in sooth, be bliss and rapture; and perchance, was her humble thought, she might see it from afar, and hear of it.  And when they went to court, and Clorinda had a great mansion in town, and many servants who needed a housewife’s eye upon their doings to restrain them from wastefulness and riot, might it not chance to be that if she served well now, and had the courage to plead with her then, she might be permitted to serve her there, living quite apart in some quiet corner of the house.  And then her wild thoughts would go so far that she would dream—­reddening at her own boldness—­of a child who might be born to them, a lordly infant son and heir, whose eyes might be blue and winning, and his hair in great fair locks, and whom she might nurse and tend and be a slave to—­and love—­and love—­and love, and who might end by knowing she was his tender servant, always to be counted on, and might look at her with that wooing, laughing glance, and even love her too.

The night Clorinda laid her commands upon Mistress Wimpole concerning the coming of Sir John Oxon, that matron, after receiving them, hurried to her other charges, flurried and full of talk, and poured forth her wonder and admiration at length.

“She is a wondrous lady!” she said—­“she is indeed!  It is not alone her beauty, but her spirit and her wit.  Mark you how she sees all things and lets none pass, and can lay a plan as prudent as any lady old enough to be twice her mother.  She knows all the ways of the world of fashion, and will guard herself against gossip in such a way that none can gainsay her high virtue.  Her spirit is too great to allow that she may even seem to be as the town ladies.  She will not have it!  Sir John will not find his court easy to pay.  She will not allow that he shall be able to say to any one that he has seen her alone a moment.  Thus, she says, he cannot boast.  If all ladies were as wise and cunning, there would be no tales to tell.”  She talked long and garrulously, and set forth to them how Mistress Clorinda had looked straight at her with her black eyes, until she had almost shaken as she sat, because it seemed as though she dared her to disobey her will; and how she had sat with her hair trailing upon the floor over the chair’s back, and at first it had seemed that she was flushed with anger, but next as if she had smiled.