Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa’s court to whom my old field-marshal had once presented me.  But when she rose and went to stand in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.

What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad.  Could I have stood before her and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well worth any penalty.

At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and stood beside me.

“You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton,” she said; and in all the thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.  “They say I am good only to fetch and carry—­may I fetch you anything?”

I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I said:  “Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else.”

At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile like that she had flung to Falconnet.

“Merci! mon Capitaine,” she said; and for all my wincings under the sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French of it.  And then she added:  “Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty’s officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?”

“’Twas no compliment,” I denied; and, indeed, I meant it.  Then I asked where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the answer to both questions.

In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess, steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.

“You are at Appleby Hundred, sir.  ’Twas here they fetched you because there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt.  Richard Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help—­”

I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from me.  And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father’s, with my enemy and his second to share the burden of me.

“But your father?” I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.

“My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e’en trust yourself to my tender mercies, Captain Ireton.  Are you strong enough to have your wound dressed?”