Her eyes--pale and dim, heavy-lidded and deeply-lined--rested often on the face of Richard Lambert, who, leaning against the corner of the hearth, had watched the proceedings silently and intently. When the Quakeress's faded gaze met that of the young man, there was a quick and anxious look which passed from her to him: a look of entreaty for comfort, one of fear and of growing horror. "And so the exiled prince lodged in your cottage, mistress?" said Squire Boatfield, after a while, turning to Mistress Lambert. The old woman's eyes wandered from Richard to the squire. The look of fear in them vanished, giving place to good-natured placidity. She shuffled forward, in the manner which had so oft irritated her lodger. "Eh? ... what?" she queried, approaching the squire, "I am somewhat hard of hearing these times." "We were speaking of your lodger, mistress," rejoined Boatfield, raising his voice, "harm hath come to him, you know." "Aye! aye!" she replied blandly, "harm hath come to our lodger.... Nay! the Lord hath willed it so.... The stranger was queer in his ways.... I don't wonder that harm hath come to him...." "You remember him well, mistress?--him and the clothes he used to wear?" asked Squire Boatfield. "Oh, yes! I remember the clothes," she rejoined. "I saw them again on the dead who now lieth in Adam's forge ... the same curious clothes of a truth ... clothes the Lord would condemn as wantonness and vanity.... I saw them again on the dead man," she reiterated garrulously, "the frills and furbelows ... things the Lord hateth ... and which no Christian should place upon his person ... yet the foreigner wore them ... he had none other ... and went out with them on him that night that the Lord sent him down into perdition...." "Did you see him go out that night, mistress?" asked the squire. "Eh? ... what? ..." "Did he go out alone?" The dimmed eyes of the old woman roamed restlessly from face to face. It seemed as if that look of horror and of fear once more struggled to appear within the pale orbs. Yet the squire looked on her with kindness, and Lady Sue's tear-veiled eyes expressed boundless sympathy. Richard, on the other hand, did not look at her, his gaze was riveted on Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse with an intensity which caused the latter to meet that look, trying to defy it, and then to flinch before its expression of passionate wrath. "We wish to know where your nephew Adam is, mistress," now broke in de Chavasse roughly, "the squire and I would wish to ask him a few questions." Then as the Quakeress did not reply, he added almost savagely: "Why don't you answer, woman? Are ye still hard of hearing?" "Your pardon, Sir Marmaduke," interposed Lambert firmly, "my aunt is old and feeble. She hath been much upset and over anxious ... seeing that my brother Adam is still from home." Sir Marmaduke broke into a loud and prolonged laugh.