“I go when you go, Madam,” said I.

“You have no need to wait for me,” said she.  “I prefer that you should not wait for me.”

I made no reply, but reined in my horse, which was somewhat restive with his head in a cloud of early flies.

“Do you not hear me, Master Wingfield?” said she.  “Why do you not proceed to church and leave me to follow when I am ready?”

She had never spoken to me in such manner before, and she dared not look at me as she spoke.

“I go when you go, Madam,” said I again.

Then, suddenly, with an impulse half of mischief and half of anger, she lashed out with her riding whip at my restive horse, and he sprang, and I had much ado to keep him from bolting.  He danced to all the trees and bushes, and she had to pull Merry Roger sharply to one side, but finally I got the mastery of him, and rode close to her again.

“Madam,” said I, “I forbid you to do that again,” and as I spoke I saw her little fingers twitch on her whip, but she dared not raise it.  She laughed as a child will who knows she is at fault and is scared by her consciousness of guilt and would conceal it by a bravado of merriment; then she said in the sweetest, wheedling tone that I had ever heard from her, and I had known her from her childhood: 

“But, Master Wingfield, ’tis broad daylight and there are no Indians hereabouts, and if there were, here are all these English sailors and Captain Tabor.  Why need you stay?  Indeed, I shall be quite safe—­and hear, that must be the last stroke of the bell?”

But I was not to be moved by wheedling.  I repeated again that I should remain where she was.  Then she, grown suddenly stern again, withdrew a little from me, and made no further efforts to get rid of me, but sat still watching the unlading with a gravity which gave me a vague uneasiness.  I began to have a feeling that here was more than appeared on the surface, and my suspicion grew as I watched the sailors lift those boxes which were supposed to contain Mistress Mary’s finery.  In the first place there were enough of them to contain the wardrobe of a lady in waiting, in the second place they were of curious shape for such purposes, in the third place ’twas all those lusty English sailors could do to lift them.

“They be the heaviest furbelows that ever maiden wore,” I thought as I watched them strain at the cases, both hauling and pulling, with many men to the ends to get them through the hatch, then ease them to the deck, with regard to the nipping of fingers.  I noted, too, an order given somewhat privately by Captain Tabor to put out the pipes, and noted that not one man but had stowed his away.