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home. A wager now and then perhaps, or even a throw of the dice, but not cards which were a dissolute foreign invention. He was saved from refusing by the Baroness, who called imperiously, “ ‘Tis late, my lord, and we have

far to drive, we must take our leave.”
    The Baron was not easy to persuade, for he had planned upon recouping some of his London losses from these simple folk, but his wife had grasped the situation and knew that future favours were dependent on tact at present. The deVeres and Tyndals began the round of ceremonious farewells. When Margaret gave her hand to John Winthrop, he pressed it slowly, and said, “Since you stay some days at Hadleigh, may I give myself the pleasure of waiting on you there.. tomorrow...?”
    Margaret looked up into the intent eyes, then lowered her own. A pulse began to beat in her full throat, she withdrew her hand. “Why, I don’t know, sir - it seems hardly - “
    “I beg of you. Mistress Margaret. I have found it so agreeable to converse with you, a pleasure I dared hope you shared.” He had a warm vibrant voice and Margaret was quite experienced enough to recognize sincerity in it, but she was embarrassed that this country squire, this twice-made widower whom she had just met, should give her a sense of excitement. “It is a long ride to Hadleigh . . ,”she began, and stopped, for her brother came up to them impatiently. “Margaret! His Lordship is waiting. Good night to you, sir I” He looked at John coldly. Arther Tyndal was a great bull of a man with an air of importance, and his manner clearly showed that he found John Winthrop negligible.
    Margaret flushed; gentle though she was by nature, a spark of revolt against her brother’s arrogance made her murmur to John as she curtseyed, “As you like, sir,” and her brown eyes smiled a little. She turned abruptly, and nearly fell over Elizabeth whose curiosity about these grand people neither a surfeit of food nor the lateness of the hour had yet sated. “Bless you child!” cried Margaret, “I didn’t see you, did I tread on your toe?”
    Elizabeth nodded solemnly. “It doesn’t matter. I - I wanted to sniff that little ball on your girdle, it smells so sweet.”
    “And so you shall,” said Margaret, holding out her pomander. The child inhaled the odour of sandalwood and violets ecstatically.
    “Bess! You presume!” said her Uncle John, but there was a gratified light in his eye as he watched Margaret give his niece a swift kiss. He had not been wrong in seeing a motheriiness in Margaret. She would be kind to stepchildren, and with those broad hips and full breasts she was doubtless a good breeder herself. After the noble party had finally left and the tired Winthrops were all in bed, John stayed up in his private closet, thinking. He glanced at his journal, the Experiencia, which he had been writing before he left for London. Phrases here and there caught his attention.

    I purpose by God’s grace to meditate more often upon the certainty and excellency of my everlasting happiness through Christ, and of the vanitye and peril! of all world felicity . . . O Lord crucifie the world unto me, that though I can not avoid to live among the baits and snares of it, yet it may be truely dead unto me and I unto it...

    There were a dozen pages of renunciation and repentance covered with his cramped strongly characterized writing, but he pushed the pile of manuscript slowly aside.
    “It is no sin before God,” he said aloud, “to long for a suitable and faithful bedfellow, and if this woman be somewhat frivolous and inclined towards the world, I’ll yet vow she is submissive and will be guided by me.” He smiled, thinking of Margaret’s confusion, her plump cosiness, her soft eyes. I believe I love her already, he thought pleasurably. His first two wives had been well dowered, but they had not also been knights’ daughters. This brought him to a less pleasing thought. Margaret’s family would make