"No," quoth her ladyship, with a light laugh—"though he must have been in haste, for the man was sent after him in but a moment's time. 'Twas then I told the fellow to go later to his lodgings and deliver my message into Sir John's own hand, whence it seems that he thinks that he must await him till he comes."

Upon a table near there lay the loaded whip; for she had felt it bolder to let it lie there as if forgotten, because her pulse had sprung so at first sight of it when she came down, and she had so quailed before the desire to thrust it away, to hide it from her sight. "And that I quail before," she had said, "I must have the will to face—or I am lost." So she had let it stay.

A languishing beauty, with melting blue eyes and a pretty fashion of ever keeping before the world of her admirers her waxen delicacy, lifted the heavy thing in her frail white hand.

"How can your ladyship wield it?" she said. "It is so heavy for a woman—but your ladyship is—is not—"

"Not quite a woman," said the beautiful creature, standing at her full great height, and smiling down at this blue and white piece of frailty with the flashing splendour of her eyes.

"Not quite a woman," cried two wits at once. "A goddess rather—an Olympian goddess."

The languisher could not endure comparisons which so seemed to disparage her ethereal charms. She lifted the weapon with a great effort, which showed the slimness of her delicate fair wrist and the sweet tracery of blue veins upon it.

"Nay," she said lispingly, "it needs the muscle of a great man to lift it. I could not hold it—much less beat with it a horse." And to show how coarse a strength was needed and how far her femininity lacked such vigour, she dropped it upon the floor—and it rolled beneath the edge of the divan.

"Now," the thought shot through my lady's brain, as a bolt shoots from the sky—"now—he laughs!"

She had no time to stir—there were upon their knees three beaux at once, and each would sure have thrust his arm below the seat and rummaged, had not God saved her! Yes, 'twas of God she thought in that terrible mad second—God!—and only a mind that is not human could have told why.

For Anne—poor Mistress Anne—white-faced and shaking, was before them all, and with a strange adroitness stooped,—and thrust her hand below, and drawing the thing forth, held it up to view.

"'Tis here," she said, "and in sooth, sister, I wonder not at its falling—its weight is so great."

Clorinda took it from her hand.

"I shall break no more beasts like Devil," she said, "and for quieter ones it weighs too much; I shall lay it by."