“She sits in her breeches—­the unruliest baggage in Gloucestershire,” cried Eldershawe, “and complains that fine ladies are not decent.  What would they say if they heard thee?”

“They may hear me when they will,” said Mistress Clo, springing to her feet with a light jump and sending the last of her apple whizzing into space with a boyish throw. “’Tis I who am the modest woman—­for all my breeches and manners.  I do not see indecency where there is none—­for the mere pleasure of ogling and bridling and calling attention to my simpering.  I should have seen no reason for airs and graces if I had been among those on the bank when the fine young Marquess we heard of saved the boat-load on the river and gave orders for the reviving of the drowned man—­in his wet skin.  When ’tis spoke of—­for ’tis a favourite story—­that little beast Tantillion hides her face behind her fan and cries, ’Oh, Lud! thank Heaven I was not near.  I should have swooned away at the very sight.’”

She imitated the affected simper of a girl in such a manner that the three sportsmen yelled with delight, and Roxholm himself gnawed his lip to check an involuntary break into laughter.

“What didst say to her the day she bridled over it at Knepton, when the young heir was there?” said Crowell, grinning.  “I was told thou disgraced thyself, Clo.  What saidst thou?”

She was standing her full straight height among them and turned, with her hands in her pockets and a grave face.

“My blood was hot,” she answered.  “I said, ’Damn thee for a lying little fool!’ That thou wouldst not!”

And the men who lay on the ground roared till they rolled there, and Roxholm gnawed his lip again, though not all from mirth, for there was in his mind another thing.  She did not laugh but stood in the same position, but now looking out across the country spread below.

“I shall love no man who will scorn me,” she continued in her mellow voice; “but if I did I would be burned alive at the stake before I would open my lips about it.  And I would be burned alive at the stake before I would play tricks with my word or break my promise when ’twas given.  Women think they can swear a thing and unswear it, to save or please themselves.  They give themselves to a man and then repent it and are slippery.  If I had given myself, and found I had been a fool, I would keep faith.  I would play no tricks—­even though I learned to hate him.  No, I will not be a woman.”

And she picked up her gun and strode away, and seeing this they rose all three by one accord, as if she were their chieftain, and followed her.

After they were gone my lord Marquess did not move for some time, but lay still among the gorse and bracken at his full length, his hands clasped behind his head.  He gazed up into the grey sky with the look of a man whose thoughts are deep and strange.  But at last he rose, and picking up his gun, shouldered it and strode forth on his way back to Dunstan’s Wolde, which was miles away.