"Master Floriszoon, silkman, at the Black Boy in Holborn!" cried he, laughingly. "Pray you, my worthy Master, how much is the best velvet by the yard? and is green stamyn now in fashion? Whereto cometh galowne lace the ounce? Let us hear thee cry, `What do you lack?' that we, may see if thou hast the true tone. Hans Floriszoon, I thought thou hadst more of the feeling of a gentleman in thee." The blood flushed to Hans' forehead, yet he answered quietly enough. "Can a gentleman not measure velvet? and what harm shall it work him to know the cost of it?" "That is a quibble," answered Aubrey, loftily. "For any gentleman to soil his fingers with craft is a blot on his escocheon, and that you know as well as I." "For any man, gentle or simple, to soil his fingers with sin, or his tongue with falsehood, is a foul blot on his escocheon," replied Hans, looking Aubrey in the face. Once more the blood mounted to Aubrey's brow, and he answered with some warmth, "What mean you?" "I did but respond to your words. Be mine other than truth?" "Be not scurrilous, boy!" said Aubrey, angrily. "Hans, I am astonished at you!" said Faith. "I know not how it is, but since we came to London, you are for ever picking quarrels with Aubrey, and seeking occasion against him. Are you envious of his better fortune, or what is it moves you?" It was a minute before Hans answered, and when he did so, his voice was very quiet and low. "I am sorry to have vexed you, Mrs Louvaine. If I know myself, I do not envy Aubrey at all; and indeed I desire to pick no quarrel with any man, and him least of any." Then, turning to Aubrey, he held out his hand. "Forgive me, if I said aught I should not." Aubrey took the offered hand, much in the manner of an insulted monarch to a penitent rebel. Lettice glanced just then at her Aunt Edith, and saw her gazing from one to the other of the two, with a perplexed and possibly displeased look on her face, but whether it were with Aubrey or with Hans, Lettice could not tell. What made Aubrey so angry did not appear. Lettice's eyes went to her grandmother. On her face was a very sorrowful look, as if she perceived and recognised some miserable possibility which she had known in the past, and now saw advancing with distress. But she did not speak either to Hans or Aubrey. The full moon of a spring evening, almost as mild as summer, lighted up the Strand, throwing into bold relief the figure of a young man, fashionably dressed, who stood at the private door of a tailor's shop, the signboard of which exhibited a very wild-looking object of human species, clad in a loose frock, with bare legs and streaming hair, known to the initiated as the sign of the Irish Boy.