Sir Oliver sheathed his weapons and resumed his coat, then came to
stand over his fallen foe, considering him critically.

"I think I have silenced him for a little time only," he said. "And I
confess that I intended to do better. I hope, however, that the lesson
will suffice and that he will lie no more--at least concerning me."

"Do you mock a fallen man?" was Master Godolphin's angry protest.

"God forbid!" said Sir Oliver soberly. "There is no mockery in my
heart. There is, believe me, nothing but regret--regret that I should
not have done the thing more thoroughly. I will send assistance from
the house as I go. Give you good day, Master Peter."

From Arwenack he rode round by Penryn on his homeward way. But he did
not go straight home. He paused at the Gates of Godolphin Court, which
stood above Trefusis Point commanding the view of Carrick Roads. He
turned in under the old gateway and drew up in the courtyard. Leaping
to the kidney-stones that paved it, he announced himself a visitor to
Mistress Rosamund.

He found her in her bower--a light, turreted chamber on the mansion's
eastern side, with windows that looked out upon that lovely sheet of
water and the wooded slopes beyond. She was sitting with a book in her
lap in the deep of that tall window when he entered, preceded and
announced by Sally Pentreath, who, now her tire-woman, had once been
her nurse.

She rose with a little exclamation of gladness when he appeared under