The man saluted anew, intoxicated with pleasure. He knew that she liked his company, and whatever was well in him burgeoned at the knowledge. His play-actor passion had bettered him, if it had not accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought lewdly of her; he would have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he first scorched his stripling's fingers, and he would have killed twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when he talked with her, ever in his chastened part of the rough old soldier, he laughed in his sleeve at the difference between part and true man. The nut-hook humor of it was that both were realities, or, perhaps, that neither were realities. As he quitted the pleasaunce he countered Mistress Tiffany, and saw at a distance, standing by the laurels, a foppish, many-colored, portly personage negligently twirling a long staff. Halfman guessed the name, grinned, and went on his business. Tiffany burst wellnigh breathless into her lady's presence. "My lady," she gasped, "here is Sir Blaise Mickleton, who entreats the honor to speak with you." Brilliana's face darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just then to the laggard in war. Then her face cleared again. "Admit him," she said. "He will divert me for want of a better." Back ran Tiffany to where the visitor lingered, bade him enter the pleasaunce, where he would find her mistress, and having delivered her errand, ran again to the house, leaving him to his adventure. XIX SIR BLAISE PAYS HIS RESPECTS