the lintel--scarce high enough to admit him without stooping--and stood
regarding him across the room with brightened eyes and flushing cheeks.

What need is there to describe her? In the blaze of notoriety into
which she was anon to be thrust by Sir Oliver Tressilian there was
scarce a poet in England who did not sing the grace and loveliness of
Rosamund Godolphin, and in all conscience enough of those fragments
have survived. Like her brother she was tawny headed and she was
divinely tall, though as yet her figure in its girlishness was almost
too slender for her height.

"I had not looked for you so early...." she was beginning, when she
observed that his countenance was oddly stern. "Why...what has
happened?" she cried, her intuitions clamouring loudly of some
mischance.

"Naught to alarm you, sweet; yet something that may vex you." He set
an arm about that lissom waist of hers above the swelling farthingale,
and gently led her back to her chair, then flung himself upon the
window-seat beside her. "You hold Sir John Killigrew in some
affection?" he said between statement and inquiry.

"Why, yes. He was our guardian until my brother came of full age."

Sir Oliver made a wry face. "Aye, there's the rub. Well, I've all but
killed him."

She drew back into her chair, recoiling before him, and he saw horror
leap to her eyes and blench her face. He made haste to explain the
causes that had led to this, he told her briefly of the calumnies