“Nay, a moment’s patience, pretty huntress, then you will come full on the scent. My Lord Rockhurst has had the singular maggot of playing a game of parental virtue with his heir.—But you are not listening.” She was pressing her temples with the tip of her fingers, as one who fights a stabbing pain. At his words, she looked up again and nodded; and he went on:— “He has pledged himself to guard the goddess for his lad in the maze of the town. Mistress Diana has seen naught of my Lord Constable but the high-souled knight, the King Arthur of romance, and so he would fain remain in her eyes even as in those of his son; and thus he, whom the town has dubbed Rakehell Rockhurst, caught in his own springe, must go on playing the pattern of chivalry, the virtuous gentleman, the devoted father—play his part out, in fact, or else be dubbed now prince of hypocrites! Aye, and the cream of the jest is that they have fallen both so mad in love with each other, aha! that each can scarce breathe in the other’s presence for the weight of the secret!” He laughed, but she brooded darkly, nibbling at her little finger. “And so,” she said after a pause, “you count upon me to lure back my lord?” “Aye,” retorted he, with a great show of ease. “That—or else to pluck the mask of grave virtue from his face … in Mistress Harcourt’s presence. Was it not agreed? Either course, I take it, will serve your purpose as well as mine. Why—I deemed you subtler, madam! Upon my Lord Constable’s discomfiture; upon the opening of my fair prude’s eyes, strikes my hour, I say. And, zounds, I take it!—Strikes your moment, too, so you know how to clutch it! Do you not see that?” She made no answer. A meaningless laugh was on her lips; it died in a sigh. A strange feeling as of soaring and undulation had come upon her, and a splitting of her thoughts as though she were in two places at once. Her mind was wandering oddly, beyond her control, to the cool meadows of her childhood’s home, to the days when she plucked daisies with her baby brother in the dew-wet grass. Lionel Ratcliffe was still speaking; she caught a word here and there. One phrase at last fixed her attention. “’Twill go hard,” he was saying, “if Lionel Ratcliffe comes not to his own to-night!” “And Jeanne de Mantes to hers!” she cried then, in a kind of high-strained voice, rousing herself. And, falling back into her abstraction: “What a wicked mist there rises from the garden,” she went on, complaining. “Aye, would I were far from here!” “And let pious Mistress Harcourt convert my Lord Constable?” “A plague on you!” she shrieked in a sudden frenzy. “Hush, hush! That word—have you forgot?” A shadow fell on them as they leaned together. She looked up in terror. It was only the old butler, with a whispered message from Lady Chillingburgh to her grandson.