know all her secrets. She would not have liked to say, for instance, how often she woke suddenly with a little feeble wail sounding in the ears that fingers cannot stop, or to confess that it cried out against a double injustice, that of life and that of death: she had crossed the border of the region of horror, and went about with a worm coiled in her heart, like a centipede in the stone of a peach. “Merton’s wife knows nothing, my lady,” she said on her return. “I saw the fellow in the yard going about much as usual. He will stand a good deal of punishing, I fancy, my lady--like that brute of a horse he makes such a fuss with. I can’t help wishing, for your ladyship’s sake, we had never set eyes on him. He’ll do us all a mischief yet before we get rid of him. I’ve had a hinstinc’ of it, my lady, from the first moment I set eyes on him;”--Caley’s speech was never classic. When she was excited it was low.--“And when I ’ave a hinstinc’ of anythink, he’s not a dog as barks for nothink. Mark my words--and I’m sure I beg your pardon, my lady --but that man will bring shame on the house. He’s that arrergant an’ interferin’ as is certain sure to bring your ladyship into public speech an’ a scandal: things will come to be spoke, my lady, that hadn’t ought to be mentioned. Why, my lady, he must ha’ struck his lordship, afore he’d ha’ give him two such black eyes as them! And him that good-natured an’ condescendin’!--I’m sure I don’t know what’s to come on it, but your ladyship might cast a thought on the rest of us females as can’t take the liberties of born ladies without sufferin’ for it. Think what the world will say of _us_. It’s hard, my lady, on the likes of us.” But Florimel was not one to be talked into doing what she did not choose. Neither would she to her maid render her reasons for not choosing. She had repaired her fortifications, strengthened herself with Liftore, and was confident. “The fact is, Caley,” she said, “I have fallen in love with Kelpie, and never mean to part with her--at least till I can ride her --or she kills me. So I can’t do without MacPhail. And I hope she won’t kill him before he has persuaded her to let me mount her. The man must go with the mare. Besides, he is such a strange fellow, if I turned him away I should quite expect him to poison her before he left.”