A pause followed.  The marquis did not think what a huge difference there is between having too much blood in the feet and too little in the brain.

’I pray, sir, can you tell me if mistress Dorothy knoweth it was before Heywood I fell?’ said Rowland at length.

’I know not; but methinks had she known, I should sooner have heard the thing myself.  Who indeed should tell her, for Shafto knew it not?  And why should she conceal it?’

‘I cannot tell, my lord:  she is not like other ladies.’

’She is like all good ladies in this, that she speaketh the truth:  why then not ask her?’

’I have had no opportunity, my lord.  I have not seen her since I left to join the army.’

‘Tut, tut!’ said his lordship, and frowned a little.  ’I thought not the damsel had been over nice.  She might well have favoured a wounded knight with a visit.’

‘She is not to blame.  It is my own fault,’ sighed Rowland.

The marquis looked at him for a moment pitifully, but made no answer, and presently took his leave.

He went straight to Dorothy, and expostulated with her.  She answered him no farther or otherwise than was simply duteous, but went at once to see Scudamore.

Mistress Watson was in the room when she entered, but left it immediately:  she had never been in spirit reconciled to Dorothy:  their relation had in it too much of latent rebuke for her.  So Dorothy found herself alone with her cousin.

He was but the ghost of the gay, self-satisfied, good-natured, jolly Rowland.  Pale and thin, with drawn face and great eyes, he held out a wasted hand to Dorothy, and looked at her, not pitifully, but despairingly.  He was one of those from whom take health and animal spirits, and they feel to themselves as if they had nothing.  Nor have they in themselves anything.  With those he could have borne what are called hardships fairly well; those gone, his soul sat aghast in an empty house.

‘My poor cousin!’ said Dorothy, touched with profound compassion at sight of his lost look.  But he only gazed at her, and said nothing.  She took the hand he did not offer, and held it kindly in hers.  He burst into tears, and she gently laid it again on the coverlid.

‘I know you despise me, Dorothy,’ he sobbed, ’and you are right:  I despise myself.’

‘You have been a good soldier to the king, Rowland,’ said Dorothy, ‘and he has acknowledged it fitly.’

’I care nothing for king or kingdom, Dorothy.  Nothing is worth caring for.  Do not mistake me.  I am not going to talk presumptuously.  I love not thee now, Dorothy.  I never did love thee, and thou dost right to despise me, for I am unworthy.  I would I were dead.  Even the king’s majesty hath been no whit the better for me, but rather the worse; for another man,—­one, I mean, who was not mounted on a stolen mare—­would have performed his hest unhindered of foregone fault.’