The girl’s hand had lain quiet in that of the youth, but now it started from it like a scared bird.  She stepped two paces back, and drew herself up.

‘And you, Richard?’ she said, interrogatively.

‘What would you ask, Dorothy?’ returned the youth, taking a step nearer, to which she responded by another backward ere she replied.

’I would know whom you choose to serve—­whether God or Satan; whether you are of those who would set at nought the laws of the land——­’

‘Insist on their fulfilment, they say, by king as well as people’ interrupted Richard.

‘They would tear their mother in pieces——­’

‘Their mother!’ repeated Richard, bewildered.

‘Their mother, the church,’ explained Dorothy.

‘Oh!’ said Richard.  ’Nay, they would but cast out of her the wolves in sheep’s clothing that devour the lambs.’

The girl was silent.  Anger glowed on her forehead and flashed from her grey eyes.  She stood one moment, then turned to leave him, but half turned again to say scornfully—­

’I must go at once to my mother!  I knew not I had left her with such a wolf as master Herbert is like to prove!’

‘Master Herbert is no bishop, Dorothy!’

‘The bishops, then, are the wolves, master Heywood?’ said the girl, with growing indignation.

’Dear Dorothy, I am but repeating what I hear.  For my own part, I know little of these matters.  And what are they to us if we love one another?’

‘I tell you I am a child no longer,’ flamed Dorothy.

’You were seventeen last St. George’s Day, and I shall be nineteen next St. Michael’s.’

‘St. George for merry England!’ cried Dorothy.

‘St. Michael for the Truth!’ cried Richard.

‘So be it.  Good-bye, then,’ said the girl, going.

‘What do you mean, Dorothy?’ said Richard; and she stood to hear, but with her back towards him, and, as it were, hovering midway in a pace.  ’Did not St. Michael also slay his dragon?  Why should the knights part company?  Believe me, Dorothy, I care more for a smile from you than for all the bishops in the church, or all the presbyters out of it.’

’You take needless pains to prove yourself a foolish boy, Richard; and if I go not to my mother at once, I fear I shall learn to despise you—­which I would not willingly.’

‘Despise me!  Do you take me for a coward then, Dorothy?’

’I say not that.  I doubt not, for the matter of swords and pistols, you are much like other male creatures; but I protest I could never love a man who preferred my company to the service of his king.’

She glided into the alley and sped along its vaulted twilight, her white dress gleaming and clouding by fits as she went.

The youth stood for a moment petrified, then started to overtake her, but stood stock-still at the entrance of the alley, and followed her only with his eyes as she went.