While yet I pondered what she might mean by this—­for she said it without the ghost of a smile—­we reached the house and rode into a great empty back-court, where nevertheless was the main entrance—­an arched doorway with a broad flight of steps.  Here she slipped from her saddle, commanded me to alight, and gave my horse over to our escort, to lead him to stable.  Signing to me, she led the way up the steps, and I followed, half-dizzy with loss of blood.  The great door stood open.  We passed into a cool hall, paved with lozenges of polished granite, white and black; and through this, with a turn to the left, down a long corridor similarly paved and hung with tapestries.  To the right of this corridor were many doors, of which she led me past five or six, and then pausing at one for me to overtake her, pushed it open.

The room within was of goodly size, and flooded with the morning sunshine that poured through three long windows.  In the midst of it stood a table laid for breakfast, and at the head of the table, backed by a sideboard loaded with cold meats, sat a man plying knife and fork, and with a flagon handy beside him—­a heavy, broad-shouldered man, with a copper-red complexion, and black hair that grew extraordinarily low upon his forehead.  This and a short, heavy jaw gave him a morose, sullen look.  I guessed his age at something near thirty.

The sight of us standing in the doorway appeared to annoy him.  He scowled for a moment at my lady, and dropped his eyes, while (as it seemed to me) a rush of angry blood suffused his face and gave it a purplish tint; but anon lifted and fixed them on me with a stare that as plainly as words demanded my business.  My lady also turned to me.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is my husband, Sir Luke Glynn.’  She faced about on him.  ’I have brought you here Captain Medhope, an officer of the rebel army, to take what repayment you are ready to give.  He is, I may warn you, a good swordsman.’

Whatever she meant by this, she said it coldly, and as coldly kept her eyes on him awaiting his answer.  Still avoiding them he continued to stare at me, and presently, pushing aside his tankard, leaned back in his chair with a rough laugh.

‘My good Kate,’ said he brutally, ’I took you at least for a sportswoman?’ Still leaning back he pointed towards me.  ’Your friend is hurt, wherever you found him.  Better ring for Pascoe and put him to bed.’

‘Hurt?’ she echoed, and turned to me, where I stood swaying, with a hand on the table’s edge, and a face (I dare say) as white as the diapered cloth.  Her eyes rested on me at first increduously, then with dismay.

‘It is not serious,’ I stammered.  ’If some one will set a chair for me—­no, not there—­clear of the rug.  My boots are full of blood, I think.’

With this I must have fallen in a faint, straight into her arms, and the faint must have lasted a few minutes.  For when my senses came back some one had removed my jack-boots and stockings, and a hand had opened my shirt wide at the breast and found the wound.  The hand was Lady Glynn’s; and on the other side of me stood her husband with a goblet of wine, some of which he had managed to coax down my throat.