gentleman pensioner, "'but the good countenance; nor the cutting that
valueth the diamond, but the virtue; nor the gloze of the tongue that
tryeth a friend, but the faith,'"

Mistress Damaris Sedley put the needle somewhat slowly through the
velvet, her fancy busy with other embroidery, not so much listening to
the spoken words as pursuing in her mind a sweet and passionate rhetoric
of her own.

"'Of a stranger I can bear much,'" went on the Lydian tones, "'for I
know not his manners; of an enemy more, for that all proceedeth of
malice; all things of a friend if it be but to try me, nothing if it be
to betray me. I am of Scipio's mind, who had rather that Hannibal should
eat his heart with salt than that Laelius should grieve it with
unkindness; and of the like with Laelius, who chose rather to be slain
with the Spaniards than suspected of Scipio.'"

Damaris quite left her work upon Bathsheba's long gold tresses and sat
with idle hands, her level gaze upon nothing short of the great highway
of the sea and certain ships thereon. Where now was the ship?--off what
green island, what strange, rich shore?

On went the gentleman pensioner. "'I can better take a blister of a
nettle than a prick of a rose; more willing that a raven should peck out
my eyes than a dove. To die of the meat one liketh not is better than
to surfeit of that he loveth; and I had rather an enemy should bury me
quick than a friend belie me when I am dead.'"

The reader made pause and received his due of soft plaudits. But Damaris
dreamed on, the gold thread loose between her fingers. She was the