'You have not!' Deborah gazed up at him with her clear eyes, reproachful, yet laughing. 'Everything comes to your hand,' said she: 'work, travel, honours, a ladye-love. Ye have all that life can offer, and yet are not content.' 'Content? No; I am not.' Kingston stopped, and gazed at the 'Mistress Mary Flemyng' whose picture hung above them. 'Here is our ancestress, Deb, the "beautiful Mary Flemyng." She resembles you. The same eyes, the same trick o' the eyelids, the same mocking, witching smile. Here she is, but seventeen, unwed still, but her fate is hanging over her. At eighteen, she was married to an old rich rake. She went mad in time, and they tell us, "died young;" the best thing she could do. Why, she had better have kept her name of Fleming, for she had a sad life of it. But she had a soft, tame, yielding nature; there was excuse for her. The Fleming fortunes too were at a perilous low ebb; and it is needful ever and anon to sacrifice a bud off the parent stem to mend the fortunes of the house. That was arranged. What is the worth of beauty but to win gold? _Thy_ beauty, poor Mary Fleming, won a fortune; thy sweetness and worth were sold to the highest bidder! It was for thy kindred's sake. Truly, it was a noble act!' 'Who told you this?' asked Deborah, gazing gravely up at her beautiful ancestress with a heightened colour and intense interest. 'I never heard the tale. O yes; surely I heard it long long ago, and thought it was a wicked act of hers. For had she not another lover--one that she really loved, young and noble?' Kingston laughed cynically. 'O yes, but poor. What was that? A victim more or less never mattered. There were a dozen went to the dogs for _her_. She looks like it--doesn't she? That invincible spirit of coquetry could never have been quenched: it lurks in her eyes, on her lips. She deserved her fate.' 'Kingston, you are hard and cruel. Success has not sweetened you. I respect poor Mary Fleming!' 'Because _you_ would have done likewise?' he asked, gazing down into her eyes fiercely and sardonically. Half angered, she turned away, yet with a smile that was full of tender trouble, tenderness sweet and strange. Kingston brooded over that smile, and liked it not. That smile would seem to shew that Deborah had a lover. Who was Deborah's favoured lover? Kingston even remembered the daisy long ago. They had not another word to say till they reached the garden. There lay the quaint flower-borders, smelling of a thousand sweets, where bees and butterflies made up the jewels, and many a darting dragon-fly. And away in the background stretched cool and deep green woods, and a green path of tender shade, where stood a rustic seat. Oh, such a seat for lovers! And the tall bright foxglove reared its dappled bells about the gloom. Kingston's dreaming eyes took all in unconsciously, while Deborah cut and piled up a blooming heap of flowers.