Mary Cavendish gathered up her blue and silver petticoats about her as closely as a blue flower-bell at nightfall, and stepped along daintily at my side, and the feel of her little hand on my arm seemed verily the only touch of material things which held me to this world. We came to a great pool of wet in our way, and suddenly I thought of her feet in her little satin shoes. "Madam, you will wet your feet if you walk through that pool in your satin shoes," I said, and my voice was so hoarse with tenderness that I would not have known it for my own, and I felt her arm tremble. "No," she said faintly. But without waiting for any permission, around her waist I put an arm, and had her raised in a twinkling from the ground, and bore her across the pool, she not struggling, but only whispering faintly when I set her down after it was well passed. "You--you should not have done that, Harry." Then of a sudden, close she pressed her soft cheek against my shoulder as we walked, and whispered, as though she could keep silent no longer, and yet as if she swooned for shame in breaking silence: "Harry, Harry, I liked the way you thrust them aside when they were rude with you, to do me a service, and Harry, you are stronger, and--and--than them all." Then I knew with such a shock of joy, that I wonder I lived, that the child loved me, but I knew at the same time as never I had known it before, my love for her. "Mistress Mary," I said, "I but did my duty and my service, which you can always count upon, and I did no more than others would have done. Sir Humphrey Hyde--" But she flung away from me at that with a sudden movement of amazement and indignation and hurt, which cut me to the quick. "Yes," she said, "yes, Master Wingfield, truly I believe that Sir Humphrey Hyde would do me any service that came in his way, and truly he is a brave lad. I have a great esteem for Humphrey--I have a greater esteem for Humphrey than for all the rest--and I care not if you know it, Master Wingfield." So saying she called to the bearers of her chair, and would have a slave assist her to it instead of me, and rode in silence the rest of the way, I following, walking my horse, who pulled hard at his bits. XIII