’She is fair enough—­not beautiful, not even pleasing; but, to be just, the demure look she puts on may bear the fault of that.  Rowland, I would not speak evil of any one, but your cousin is a hypocrite.  She is false at heart, and she hates me.  Trust me, she but bides her time to let me know it—­and you too, my Rowland.’

‘I am sure you mistake her, Amanda,’ said Scudamore.  ’Her looks are but modest, and her words but shy, for she came hither from a lonely house.  I believe she is honest and good.’

’Seest thou not then how that she makes friends with none but her betters?  Already hath she wound herself around my lady’s heart, forsooth! and now she pays her court to the puffing chaplain!  Hast thou never observed, my Rowland, how oft she crosses the bridge to the yellow tower?  What seeks she there?  Old Kaltoff, the Dutchman, it can hardly be.  I know she thinks to curry with my lord by pretending to love locks and screws and pistols and such like.  “But why should she haunt the place when my lord is not there?” you will ask.  Her pretence will hold the better for it, no doubt, and Caspar will report concerning her.  And if she pleases my lord well, who knows but he may give her a pair of watches to hang at her ears, or a box that Paracelsus himself could not open without the secret as well as the key?  I have heard of both such.  They say my lord hath twenty cartloads of quite as wonderful things in that vault he calls his workshop.  Hast thou never marked the huge cabinet of black inlaid with silver, that stands by the wall—­fitter indeed for my lady’s chamber than such a foul place?’

‘I have seen it,’ answered Scudamore.

‘I warrant me it hath store of gewgaws fit for a duchess.’

‘Like enough,’ assented Rowland.

’If mistress Dorothy were to find the way through my lord’s favour into that cabinet—­truly it were nothing to thee or me, Rowland.’

‘Assuredly not.  It would be my lord’s own business.’

’Once upon a time I was sent to carry my young lady Raven thither—­to see my lord earn his bread, as said my lady:  and what should my lord but give her no less than a ball of silver which, thrown into a vessel of water at any moment would plainly tell by how much it rose above the top, the very hour and minute of the day or night, as well and truly as the castle-clock itself.  Tell me not, Rowland, that the damsel hath no design in it.  Her looks betoken a better wisdom.  Doth she not, I ask your honesty, far more resemble a nose-pinched puritan than a loyal maiden?’

Thus amongst the apple-blossoms talked Amanda Serafina.

‘Prithee, be not too severe with my cousin, Amanda,’ pleaded Scudamore.  ’She is much too sober to please my fancy, but wherefore should I for that hate her?  And if she hath something the look of a long-faced fanatic, thou must think, she hath but now, as it were, lost her mother.’

’But now!  And I never knew mine!  Ah, Rowland, how lonely is the world!’