“‘My love has left me a chain of gold, With a knot of pearls, for a token. It came from his hand when that hand was cold, And the heart within him broken.’” There was a short silence in the music-room, the flames of the candles swaying this way and that as though some one moving had sent a draught upon them. My lord turned with a laugh that had no mirth in it. “A dreary ditty. Where did you come by the song?” She answered him with three words. “In this room.” My lady’s silks rustled in the window-seat like the sound of trees shivering in autumn. “What moods the girl has!” My lord kept his eyes on Barbara. “Is there any more of that song?” “There was only one verse to it till I found another.” “So!” “For to match that chain—there were three other chains. And they were sewn upon a black cloak with a lining of purple silk, the cloak Captain John wore the night he fought Lord Pembroke.” My lord pushed back the settle very slowly. His face was in the shadow, but for all that it was not pleasant to behold. “Has the child these mad fits often?” he asked, with a jerk of the chin. “She will be wishing Jack at Newgate next.” Barbara would not take her eyes from him to glance in the direction of her mother. Had she looked at Anne Purcell she would have seen a plump, comely woman grown old suddenly, and trying to make anger shine through fear. “The cloak did not belong to John Gore, my lord. Nor did he know that I have the chain from it that I found in my father’s hand.” She rose suddenly, and, swinging the chair before her, knelt with one knee on it and steadied her elbow on the back. “Father lay over there—near the table. There is a stain on the floor still—though Mrs. Jael was set to scrub. It was I who found him. You may remember that.” They both looked at her askance, cowed and caught at a disadvantage for the moment by this knowledge that she had and by her hardiness in accusing. “My dear young madam, you had better go to bed.” Her bleak imperturbability turned my lord’s sneer aside like granite. “Here is the chain from your cloak. I give it back to you now that it has served its purpose.” She flung out her hand, and the chain fell close to my Lord Gore’s feet. He did not even trouble to look at it, as though he had no wish to appear seriously concerned. “We appear to be judge, jury, and witness all in one,” he said. “Come down off that chair, my dear, and don’t be foolish.” He spoke with an air of amused impatience, but there was something in his eyes that made her know the truth of what she had said. “You have always thought me a little mad, my lord.” “No, assuredly not. Only a little strange in your appreciation of a joke. Nan, stay quiet.” Barbara had put her hands into her bosom, given one glance behind her, and then levelled a pistol at my lord’s breast. The high-backed chair and the settle were scarcely four paces apart.