This Peggy was a born coquette--not of the type that sets its cap at a man as obviously as a boy casts the net for butterflies, but a coquette by instinct, full of contradictory impulses, with eyes that whispered "Come!" even while blush and frown cried "Halt!"--with the gaiety of a flight of larks, alternating with pouts and tears as sudden and violent as a summer thunder-shower. Such a girl has often a peculiar charm for an older man, who looks on amused at her coquetries, and finds her friendship as firm as her loves are fickle. Between Governor Brent and Peggy Neville such a friendship was established, and it was with a delight dimpling into smiles that she threw wide the window, and leaning out into the frosty air, cried out joyously,-- "Good-morning, your Excellency! Do you bring any news of that good-for-nothing brother of mine?" The governor shook his sword at her. "I will have you in the sheriff's hands if you speak so lightly of my close friend," he answered. "Is your aunt at home?" "No, but my aunt's niece is, and much exercised to hear the news from Kent Fort. So prithee come in and rest awhile." Brent entered at a door so low that he was compelled to bow his tall head. "The news of most interest to you," he said, seating himself by the fire, "comes not from Kent Fort, but from St. Gabriel's Manor, which I left just before the expected arrival of that aforesaid good-for-nothing brother of yours, who is in treaty with me for the manor at Cecil Point, which Baltimore christened Robin Hood's Barn when he made a grant of it to Mistress Elinor Calvert. The lady is staying with my sister Mary at present." "You have just come from St. Gabriel's?" queried Peggy, "and just seen Mistress Calvert? Then pray tell me all about her. She is very, _very_ handsome, they say--" "Then for once they say truth. I have seen her enter the gallery at The Globe when all the gallants on the stage rose to catch sight of her, and I have seen the London street-sweepers follow her for a mile. There's beauty for you!" "And she is very wise too?" "Ay, as good a head for affairs as mine, and I think no small things of mine own abilities." "And she is virtuous and tender and true?" "The tenderest of mothers, and the loyalest of kinswomen." Peggy cast down her long-fringed eyes and studied the pointed toes of her red slippers. At length looking up timidly she asked,-- "Think you I could ever be like her?" Giles Brent burst out into a great laugh. "Oh--not in beauty!" Peggy rushed on, all in confusion--"not in beauty, of course, nor in mind, but could I make my character like hers? You see, Christopher has always told me how perfect she was, and said how proud he should be to see me like her." "Christopher!" exclaimed Brent. "Oho!" he thought to himself, "so the wind blows from that quarter, does it? That explains many things. But why under heaven did he conceal the whole business from me?"