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hastened into the room. “What’s going on?”he sputtered. “What shamelessness is this?” He seized the girl’s shoulder. “Thou Babylonian harlot!”
    Rupert plucked his arm away, though cloth ripped between the fingers. “Sir, have done,” the prince said through stiff lips. “If any fault is here, it lies with me. I spoke a thing which made the maid grow faint.”
    Jennifer sank to the floor and wept into her hands. For a while Rupert and Shelgrave traded glares. At last the Puritan declared: “I have to take your word for that, my lord, but must insist that she no longer see you, and hope that you will soon depart.”
    “I too,” growled Rupert.
    Jennifer raised her head, shook it, climbed back to her feet and stood fist-clenched, choking off sobs and hiccoughs. “Come,” ordered Shelgrave. He beckoned and marched out.
    She looked at Rupert like a blind woman. “Farewell,” she got forth.
    Few had heard a like gentleness from him: “And fare thee well, bright lady.”
    Alone behind a shut door, he sought a window and stood staring out into the thin rain. There went within him:
    A dear, high-hearted lass—but oh, how young, and shieldless as the youthful ever are! My birth was barely seven years before; but I have ranged and roved and reaved so much that on this day of heaven’s tears I feel it is an old man who’s to be beheaded. I hope she’ll find a better, safer love, and bear him many children like herself, yet keep my memory aglow the while, and sometimes smiling warm her soul at it.
    Will Mary Villiers do the same in Oxford?
    O Richmond’s Duchess, I have been thy servant—thy servant only, gorgeous butterfly—the most thou wanted—and thy husband is my staunch supporter—I’d not shame a friend, no matter what a hollowness I have where thou shouldst be and art not.
He straightened.
Well-a-day,
he told himself,
let’s cut a few more lines in wax, my lad, not imitate the sky, which doesn’t mourn as first we thought, but merely sits and snivels. For Fortunes’s wheel has many turns to go, and where ’tis bound for, none but God may know.

v
    KIRKSTALL ABBEY. MORNING.
    M ANY of the spare old walls remained. Ivy up their sides, grass in floors and flagstones, rooks and bats which were the sole congregation of the church, had not had time to finish what Puritans would hasten. The clustered buildings blocked off view of the manor, and view from it.
    Jennifer passed between guesthouse and common room, into the cloister. Leaves that climbed everywhere about her glittered with water, and puddles shone like metal. This dawn had finally seen sun. A few bits of white fluff drifted across blue dazzlement. Birds jubilated. The breeze making stray dandelions nod was cool and damp, however. The girl shivered a little and sought what warmth might be stored in the corner of nave and transept.
    Her face was pale, save for darknesses around the eyes. Fingers strained against each other. Her glance drifted from unbelled belfry to crumbled punishment cell. She said into vacancy: “I hear the linnet and the lark declare that we have seen all murkiness depart. The flowers flaunt their hues through brilliant air, and it is only raining in my heart. When yesterday I heard how great thy woe, a lightning bolt struck lurid hellfire white; I heard the thunder toll, the stormwind blow, and nothing else through centuries of night.” She sighed. “But day must break, and gales lie down to rest, and sunshine hunt the clouds across the sea. Alone in nature is the human breast, where grief, like love, may dwell eternally.” She bent her bared head. “Unless there come an ending of thy pain, I must forever stand and wait in rain.”
    After a moment:
But not in death that ending, my beloved! Thou didst dissemble far too skillfully. I neverknew how deep thy shackles gall or that beneath thine easy pleasantries the block and ax are lurking
—
    A noise brought her around “Oh! Who’s this?”
    The man who had