"You avail yourself of this painful situation to insult me, Henry,
though I have little deserved it. Conachar is nothing to me, more
than the trying to tame his wild spirit by instruction might lead
me to take some interest in a mind abandoned to prejudices and
passions, and therein, Henry, not unlike your own."

"It must then be some of these flaunting silkworm sirs about the
court," said the armourer, his natural heat of temper kindling
from disappointment and vexation--"some of those who think they
carry it off through the height of their plumed bonnets and the
jingle of their spurs. I would I knew which it was that, leaving his
natural mates, the painted and perfumed dames of the court, comes
to take his prey among the simple maidens of the burgher craft. I
would I knew but his name and surname!"

"Henry Smith," said Catharine, shaking off the weakness which
seemed to threaten to overpower her a moment before, "this is the
language of an ungrateful fool, or rather of a frantic madman. I
have told you already, there was no one who stood, at the beginning
of this conference, more high in my opinion than he who is now losing
ground with every word he utters in the tone of unjust suspicion
and senseless anger. You had no title to know even what I have
told you, which, I pray you to observe, implies no preference to
you over others, though it disowns any preference of another to
you. It is enough you should be aware that there is as insuperable
an objection to what you desire as if an enchanter had a spell over
my destiny."

"Spells may be broken by true men," said, the smith. "I would it