Just then she heard, as if in the room beyond, a few footsteps, then a call: "Come, Harry!" and after that the opening and shutting of a distant door. It was the Duke of Wessex going again, somewhere where perhaps she could not find him again, and here was this man standing between her and the object of her adoration. With a vigorous jerk she freed herself from Don Miguel's grasp. "Have a care, man, have a care," she said in a low, trembling voice, in which a suppressed passion seemed suddenly to vibrate. "Let me pass, or . . ." "Silence, wench!" commanded Don Miguel. "Another word and I call the guard and have thee whipped as a disturber of the peace." She started as if stung with the very lash with which he so callously threatened her. The fumes of wine and of excitement were being slowly expelled from her dull brain. A vague sense of bitter wrong crept into her heart; her own native shrewdness--the shrewdness of the country wench--made her dimly realize that she had been fooled: how and for what purpose she could not yet comprehend. She pushed the tangled hair from her forehead, mechanically readjusting her cumbersome garments, then she stepped close up to the young Spaniard; she crossed her arms over her breast and looked him boldly in the eyes. "Soho! my fine lord!" she said, speaking with a strange and pathetic effort at calmness, "that's it, is it? . . . and do ye take me for a fool, that I do not see through your tricks? . . . You and that purple-robed hypocrite there wanted to make use of me . . . you cajoled me with soft words . . . promises . . . what? . . . Bah! you tricked me, I say, do you hear?" she added with ever-increasing vehemence, "tricked me that you might trick him. . . . With all your talks of Ursula and Lady . . . the devil alone knows what ye wanted. . . . Well! you've had your way . . . he looked on me as he would on a plague-stricken cur . . . mangy and dirty. . . . Was that what ye wanted? . . . You've had your will . . . are ye satisfied . . . what more do ye want of me?" Don Miguel, much astonished at this unexpected outburst of passion, gazed at her with a sneer, then he shrugged his shoulders and said coldly-- "Nothing, wench! His Grace of Wessex does not desire thy company, and I cannot allow thee to molest him. If thou'lt depart in peace, there'll be a well-filled purse for thee . . . if not . . . the whip, my girl . . . the whip . . . understand!" "I will not go!" she repeated with dogged obstinacy. "I'll not . . . I'll not . . . I'll see him just once . . . he was good to me. . . . I love his beautiful face and his kind, white hands; I want to kiss them. . . . I'll not go . . . I'll not . . . till I've kissed them. . . . So do not stand in my way, fine sir . . . but let me get to him. . . ."