’So my neck be fair in thine eyes, my lord, it may go bare and be well clad.  I should, in sad earnest, be jealous of the pretty stones didst thou give my neck one look the more for their presence.  Here! thou may’st sell these the next time thou goest London-wards.’

As she spoke, she put up her hand to unclasp her necklace of large pearls, but he laid his hand upon it, saying,

’Nay, Margaret, there is no need.  My father is like the father in the parable:  he hath enough and to spare.  I did mean to have the money of him again, only as the vaunted horses never came, but were swallowed up of Gloucester, as Jonah of the whale, and have not yet been cast up again, I could not bring my tongue to ask him for it; and so thy neck is bare of emeralds, my dove.’

    ‘Back and sides go bare, go bare,’

sang lady Margaret with a merry laugh;

    ‘Both foot and hand go cold;’

here she paused for a moment, and looked down with a shining thoughtfulness; then sang out clear and loud, with bold alteration of bishop Stills’ drinking song,

    ’But, heart, God send thee love enough,
      Of the new that will never be old.’

’Amen, my dove!’said lord Herbert.

’Thou art in doleful dumps, Ned.  If we had but a masque for thee, or a play, or even some jugglers with their balls!’

’Puh, Peggy! thou art masque and play both in one; and for thy jugglers, I trust I can juggle better at my own hand than any troop of them from furthest India.  Sing me a song, sweet heart.’

‘I will, my love,’ answered lady Margaret.

Rising, she went to the harpsichord, and sang, in sweet unaffected style, one of the songs of her native country, a merry ditty, with a breathing of sadness in the refrain of it, like a twilight wind in a bed of bulrushes.

‘Thanks, my love,’ said lord Herbert, when she had finished.  ’But I would I could tell its hidden purport; for I am one of those who think music none the worse for carrying with it an air of such sound as speaks to the brain as well as the heart.’

Lady Margaret gave a playful sigh.

’Thou hast one fault, my Edward—­thou art a stranger to the tongue in which, through my old nurse’s tales, I learned the language of love.  I cannot call it my mother-tongue, but it is my love-tongue.  Why, when thou art from me, I am loving thee in Irish all day long, and thou never knowest what my heart says to thee!  It is a sad lack in thy all-completeness, dear heart.  But, I bethink me, thy new cousin did sing a fair song in thy own tongue the other day, the which if thou canst understand one straw better than my Irish, I will learn it for thy sake, though truly it is Greek to me.  I will send for her.  Shall I?’

As she spoke she rose and rang the bell on the table, and a little page, in waiting in the antechamber, appeared, whom she sent to desire the attendance of mistress Dorothy Vaughan.