"There is a little chapel in the dell beside your manor, Monsieur. If
you will go there, and get upon your knees, and pray till the candles no
more burn, and the Popish images crumble in their places, you will yet
never understand myself or any woman."

"There's no question of Popish images between us," he answered, vainly
trying for foothold. "Pray as you please, and I'll see no harm comes to
the Mistress of Rozel."

He was out of his bearings and impatient. Religion to him was a dull
recreation invented chiefly for women. She became plain enough now.
"'Tis no images nor religion that stands between us," she answered,
"though they might well do so. It is that I do not love you, Monsieur of
Rozel."

His face, which had slowly clouded, suddenly cleared. "Love! Love!" He
laughed good-humouredly. "Love comes, I'm told, with marriage. But we
can do well enough without fugling on that pipe. Come, come, dost think
I'm not a proper man and a gentleman? Dost think I'll not use thee well
and 'fend thee, Huguenot though thou art, 'gainst trouble or fret or any
man's persecutions--be he my Lord Bishop, my Lord Chancellor, or King of
France, or any other?"

She came a step closer to him, even as though she would lay a hand upon
his arm. "I believe that you would do all that in you lay," she answered
steadily. "Yours is a rough wooing, but it is honest--"

"Rough! Rough!" he protested, for he thought he had behaved like some
Adonis. Was it not ten years only since he had been at Court!