“Master Wingfield,” said a voice so gently and sweetly repellent and forbidding, even while it entreated, that it shivered the air with discord, and I looked around, and there stood Catherine Cavendish.  She stood quite near the rock where I sat, but she kept her head turned slightly away as if she could not bear the sight of my face, though she was constrained to speak to me.  But I, and I speak the truth, since I held it unworthy a man and a gentleman to feel aught of wrath or contempt when he was sole sufferer by reason of any wrong done by a woman, had nothing but that ever recurrent surprise and unbelief at the sight of her, to reconcile what I knew, or thought I knew, with what she seemed.

I rose and stepped from my rock to the green shore, and she moved a little back with a slight courtesy.  “Good-morning, Mistress Catherine,” I said.

“What know you of what my sister hath done and the cargo that came yesterday on the Golden Horn?” she demanded with no preface and of a sudden; her voice rang sharp as I remembered it when she first spoke to me by that white hedge of England, and I could have sworn that the tide had verily borne us thither, and she was again that sallow girl and I the blundering lout of a lad.

“That I cannot answer you, madam,” said I, and bowed and would have passed, but she stood before me.  So satin smooth was her hair that even the fresh wind could not ruffle it, and in such straight lines of maiden modesty hung her green gown—­always she wore green, and it became her well, and ’twas a colour I always fancied—­that it but fluttered a little around her feet in the marsh grass, but her face looked out from a green gauze hood with an expression that belied all this steadfastness of primness and decorum.  It was as if a play-actress had changed her character and not her attire, which suited another part.  Out came her slim arm, as if she would have caught me by the hand for the sake of compelling my answer; then she drew it back and spoke with all the sharp vehemence of passion of a woman who oversteps the bounds of restraint which she has set herself, and is a wilder thing than if she had been hitherto unfettered by her will.

“I command you to tell me what I wish to know, Harry Wingfield;” said she, and now her eyes fixed mine with no shrinking, but a broadside of scorn and imperiousness.

“And I refuse to tell you, madam,” said I.

Then indeed she caught my arm with a little nervous hand, like a cramp of wire.  “You shall tell me, sir,” she declared.  “This much I know already.  Yesterday the Golden Horn came in and was unladen of powder and shot instead of the goods that my sister pretended to order, and the cases are stored at Laurel Creek.  This much do I know, but not what is afoot, nor for what Mary had conference with Sir Humphrey Hyde and Ralph last night, and you later on with Sir Humphrey.  I demand of you that you tell me, Harry Wingfield.”