‘Never, my lord,’ exclaimed Dorothy with vehemence.

‘And when thou dost,’ the marquis went on, ’all I beg of thee is, that on thy wedding day thou whisper thy bridegroom:  “My lord of Worcester told me so;” and therewith thou shalt have my blessing, whether I be down here in Raglan, or up the great stair with little Molly.’

Dorothy was silent.  The marquis held out his hand.  She kissed it, left the room, and flew to the top of the keep.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The horoscope.

Ere the next day was over, it was understood throughout the castle that lord Herbert was constructing a horoscope—­not that there were many in the place who understood what a horoscope really was, or had any knowledge of the modes of that astrology in whose results they firmly believed; yet Kaltoff having been seen carrying several mysterious-looking instruments to the top of the library tower, the word was presently in everybody’s mouth.  Nor were the lovers of marvel likely to be disappointed, for no sooner was the sun down than there was lord Herbert, his head in an outlandish Persian hat, visible over the parapet from the stone-court, while from some of the higher windows in the grass-court might be seen through a battlement his long flowing gown of a golden tint, wrought with hieroglyphics in blue.  Now he would stand for a while gazing up into the heavens, now would be shifting and adjusting this or that instrument, then peering along or through it, and then re-arranging it, or kneeling and drawing lines, now circular, now straight, upon a sheet of paper spread flat on the roof of the tower.  There he still was when the household retired to rest, and there, in the grey dawn, his wife, waking up and peeping from her window, saw him still, against the cold sky, pacing the roof with bent head and thoughtful demeanour.  In the morning he was gone, and no one but lady Margaret saw him during the whole of the following day.  Nor indeed could any but herself or Caspar have found him, for the tale Tom Fool told the rustics of a magically concealed armoury had been suggested by a rumour current in the house, believed by all without any proof, and yet not the less a fact, that lord Herbert had a chamber of which none of the domestics knew door or window, or even the locality.  That recourse should have been had to spells and incantations for its concealment, however, as was also commonly accepted, would have seemed trouble unnecessary to any one who knew the mechanical means his lordship had employed for the purpose.  The touch of a pin on a certain spot in one of the bookcases in the library, admitted him to a wooden stair which, with the aid of Caspar, he had constructed in an ancient disused chimney, and which led down to a small chamber in the roof of a sort of porch built over the stair from the stone-court to the stables.  There was no other access to it, and the place had never been used, nor had any window but one which they had constructed in the roof so cunningly as to attract no notice.  All the household supposed the hidden chamber, whose existence was unquestioned, to be in the great tower, somewhere near the workshop.