"I cannot take them, madam," I said. Yet such was her distress I was sorry for her, though I believed it to be rooted and grounded in falsity, and that she had no need to regard with such disapprobation her sister's being indebted to an English gentleman who gave her in all honour the best he had. Yet could I not yield and take those jewels, for more reasons than one; not only should I have lost the dear delight of having served Mary Cavendish, but I had a memory of wrong which would not suffer me to touch those rings, nor to allow that innocent maid to be benefited by them, since I cannot say what dark suspicions seized me when I looked at them. "My God!" she said, "was ever such a web of falsehood as this? Here must I hear my sister's blessings upon me for what I have done, and I knowing all the time that 'twas you, and yet she must not know." Then again that flame of red overspread her face and neck to the meet of her muslin kerchief, and I knew not why. "Madam," I said, "one deception opens the way for a whole flock," and I spoke with something of a double meaning, but she only cried out, with apparently no understanding of it, that things had come to a cruel pass, and back to the house she went; and I presently followed her to get my gun, having a mind to shoot a few wild fowl, since my pupil was at her wheel. And there the two sat, keeping up that gentle drone of industry which I have come to think of as a note of womanhood, like the hum of a bee or the purr of a cat or the call of a bird. They sat erect, the delicate napes of their necks showing above their muslin kerchiefs under their high twists of hair, for even Mary had her golden curls caught up that morning on account of the flax-lint, and from their fair, attentive faces nobody would have gathered what stress of mind both were in. Of a surety there must be a quieting and calming power in some of the feminine industries which be a boon to the soul. But, as I passed through the hall, up looked Mary, and her beautiful face flashed out of peace into a sunlight of love and enthusiasm. "Oh," she cried out, "oh, was there ever anyone like my sweetheart Catherine? To think what she hath done for me, to think, to think! And she, dear heart, loving the king! But better she loves her little sister, and will stand by her in her disloyalty, for the love of her. Was there ever any one like her, Master Wingfield?"