The rich dress of the person who stood without; the sudden doffing of his bonnet, the long plumes of which swept over Dame Rogers’s budding roses, as its owner bowed low and reverently to the young Puritan, standing in her nun-like simplicity of apparel within, bewildered her for a moment. Then she recognized Sir Philip Dacre, the companion of their journey from Cumberland, and gravely bade him enter. Her father, for whom he asked, she expected very soon. Dame Rogers withdrew herself and her daughter into another apartment in jealous fear. “Save us! one knows not where the cavalier may have been--and an he be a lord, he might carry the pestilence as ready as a serving-man. Get thee to thy chamber, Mercy; if he is known to Mistress Edith she must even take the peril to herself.” “But, mother,” hesitated Mercy, “Mistress Edith is so good and gentle, it is hard-hearted to leave her.” “Thou would’st not have staid in yonder grand cavalier’s presence, I trow?” said her mother. “I will tarry here lest Mistress Edith call, and there is the perfume burning in the chamber that will be a protection to her, but thou wouldest not have had us tarry to listen to all the noble gentleman might say?” Mercy went up-stairs, scarcely deceived by her mother’s elaborate sophisms; and the good dame remained timidly in her kitchen, bathing her hands and forehead with vinegar, and ejaculating under her breath, fears, prayers, wishes, and resolves--very natural if not the most coherent in the world, while Edith, with a good deal of embarrassment, remained alone with the stranger. The unexplained connection subsisting between his family and hers--the wrong so mysteriously alluded to, which since their coming here, with so many matters of more immediate weight to occupy them, she had had no opportunity of speaking of to her father--increased the natural shyness, which in spite of her ready devotion and fearless carrying out of the dangerous work she had begun, ever reasserted its girlish pre-eminence in all matters of common life. So Edith drooped her head as she bade the young cavalier seat himself, and cast furtive glances from the window upon the road, looking for her father, much as other maidens of her years would have been likely to do. “It is a sad peril this, Mistress Edith, for one so young as you,” said Sir Philip, with a kindred hesitation. “Yonder lonely dell in Cumberland would be thought a blessed refuge by many in these times, who might bear more than you, if years made courage.” “Nay, we are together now,” said Edith, quickly; “and there is none other of our blood in all the world to weep for us.” “Ah, Mistress Edith, say not so,” said the young man, a flush of deep shame covering his face. Edith could only wonder--she did not answer. “My mother--but it becomes me not to speak to you of my mother--” “Wherefore, Sir Philip?” Edith forgot her shyness so far as to turn from the window, and look at him in astonishment.