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when he thought of it.
    Nobody noticed the great door open, nor saw the tall man in black who stopped in astonishment to stare at the gyrating couples.
    He watched them for a moment, then walked across the end of the room to Mistress Winthrop’s chair. “For the love of heaven, my mother - what is the meaning of this?” he said in her ear as he kissed her cheek.
    The old lady had been dozing. “Mercy, what a startle! Why, John,

son, your letter said - we didn’t look for you till Thursday ... ‘tis the King’s birthday we celebrate, your father did wish it ... and imagine, the deVeres have actually honoured us!”
    “So I see,” said John Winthrop. “And I have a very good notion as to why.” He had been hearing of deVere in London. The Baron was out of favour at court, had run up huge gambling debts, there was talk of bankruptcy. The favour and indeed more tangible help of a prosperous neighbour might well be useful. Still it was agreeable to be on equal footing with a nobleman. John withdrew behind his mother’s big chair and gazed thoughtfully at the dancers.
    On all this trip to London John had been wrestling with his soul, endeavouring to follow the rigid course of discipline he had laid out for himself. He had avoided all drink but water, he had eschewed smoking of which he had been overly fond. He had read nothing but the Scriptures, spoken no ungodly word. He had kept the Sabbaths with careful piety and found a nonconformist church where the minister bravely ignored the ceremonies ordained by the bishops. Above all John had resisted the lewdness of the flesh which had bedevilled him since his wife’s death, and there had been a moment of hideous temptation one night on the Chepe - a beautiful Spanish whore. God had rewarded him. Every business matter had been decided in his favour, the final settlement of his first wife’s estate had been made. He had returned home with his money-bag far heavier than when he started. But his mood was lighter. A month ago this frivolous scene would have disgusted him, he would have felt it his duty to remonstrate with his father. But now as he watched the bright couples change from the galliard to a livelier hay and listened to the cheerful music he began to wonder if extreme asceticism were not another of the Devil’s guises for Pride, for somewhere on the journey home the certainty of righteousness had vanished. And it is true, he thought, that David saw no harm in dancing and that Our Blessed Lord smiled on the feast at Cana. “Who is that young gentleman in red?” he suddenly asked his mother. “The one dancing with Edward Waldegrave.”
    Mrs. Winthrop squinted towards a group near the door and said, “Oh, ‘tis Margaret Tyndal, a spinster. Her brother, Arthur, is yonder by the stairs, and there is her mother, Lady Tyndal, dancing - and at her age I find it unbecoming - with your father.”
    “Indeed,” said John, “not the family of Sir John Tyndal who was cut off in London by the mad assassin last year?”
    “The very one,” said his mother. “They have large property at Much Maplested in Essex. I hear that the young gentlewoman is well dowered.”
    John said nothing for a moment, as he watched Margaret. He though her somewhat short and dumpy and saw that she was unskilled at dancing, but the round face between the bobbing brown ringlets was comely enough, and as she answered something said to her by young Waldegrave she showed a singularly sweet smile. “She seems not far from thirty,” he remarked. “Strange that she has not married . . . perhaps some physical weakness we see not. . . .”
    His mother shot him a shrewd look. “I believe it’s nothing of the kind. I had some converse earlier with Lady Tyndal. Mistress Margaret has been betrothed but the man died, and then this tragedy to her father, and besides I believe the brother is most proud, wishes a great match for his sister.”
    John listened with the grave attention which was