Sir Luke looked up, and was the first to catch sight of me.

‘Hear the guns?’ he said.  ’Your foot hasn’t the luck of your horse.  The King caught ’em, drove ’em back over Lestithiel Bridge, and has been keeping ’em on the run all day, pressing ’em t’wards the coast.’

‘Is that the report?’ I asked.

‘That’s my report,’ he answered; ’and’—­thrusting forward one bemired boot—­’you may count on it.  I’ve been following and watching the fun.’

By this time Lady Glynn had turned and came past her husband to greet me, without throwing him a look.

‘You are the better for your rest?’ she asked.  ’At least I see that, though wounded, you have contrived to pay me the compliment of wearing fresh linen and a clean pair of boots.’

This was awkward, and—­what was worse—­she said it awkwardly, with a sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all.  She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that she had succeeded.  He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown, while she stood smiling, holding out a hand to me.

I touched it respectfully, and let it drop.  ‘The credit,’ said I, ‘belongs all to your servant Pascoe.’

‘And here he is,’ she took me up gaily, as Pascoe appeared in the doorway.  ‘Is dinner ready?’

‘To be served at once, my lady.’

’Then will you lead me to my seat, Captain Medhope?  Yours is beside me, on the right; yes, close there.  My husband, at his end, can enjoy the fire.’

We took our seats.  I was hungry, and the dinner good.  I ate of everything, but can only recall an excellent grill of salmon and a roast haunch of venison:  the reason being that Lady Glynn kept me in continued talk.  Poor lady!—­I had almost said, poor child!—­for her desperate artlessness became the more apparent to me the more she persisted.  Even I, who, as the reader has been told, have the smallest skill in the ways of women, could see that here was one, of high breeding but untutored, playing at a game at once above and beneath her; almost as far above her achieving as it lay beneath her true contempt.  She knew that women can inveigle men; but in the practice of it I am very sure that her dairymaid could have given her lessons.

But what am I saying?  Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me.  They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them.  They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband.  Her dress, too, was something shameless.  She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour’s, that displayed her young neck and bust.  About her neck she had fastened a string of garnets.  She had loaded her fingers with old-fashioned rings, of which the very dullness made me wince to see them employed in this sorry service.  And I guessed that before my entrance this unusual finery had provoked her husband to fury.