“I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be.  And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend to Dick did I not—­”

She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to me for silence while she looked below.  The window overhung the entrance on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some babblement of voices, though not the words.

“I must go down,” she said. “’Tis company come, and my father is away.”

She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had thought her gone—­gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the factor.  But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.

“You say ‘Richard Jennifer or another.’  What know you of any other, Monsieur John?”

“Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have been hoping there was no other.”

“But if I say there may be?”

My heart went sick at that.  True, I had thought to give her generously to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another—­

“Margery, come hither where I may see you.”  And when she stood before me like a bidden child:  “Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?”

But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive she fell a-laughing.

“What impudence!” she cried. “Ma foi!  You should borrow Pere Matthieu’s cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you.  But not before.”

But still I pressed her.

“Tell me, Margery.”

She tossed her head and would not look at me.  “Dick Jennifer is but a boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown.”

“Yes?”

“And a soldier.”

The sickness in my heart became a fire.

“O Margery!  Don’t tell me it is this fiend who came just now!”

All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place was strange to me.  Tears came; her bosom heaved.  And then she would have passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.

“Margery, one moment:  for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick’s or mine, have naught to do with this devil’s emissary of a man.  If you only knew—­if I dared tell you—­”

But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit.  She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.

“Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to put you in arrest.  And in return you call him names behind his back.  I shall not stay to listen, sir.”

With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her hand upon the latch.  But I would say my say.

“Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; ’twas only what you said that made me mad.  ’Tis less than naught if you’ll deny it.”