Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/105

Rh the night with Mr. Godolphin, who took charge of the three wounded men; while we carried the Lady Alicia off to Pengersick (whither the prisoner Gil Perez had been marched on ahead), she riding pillion behind my Master, and the rest of us at a seemly distance. On reaching home I had first to busy myself with orders for the victuals to be sent down to the foreigners at the Cove, and afterwards in snatching my supper in the great hall, where already I saw my Master and the strange lady making good cheer together at the high table. He had bidden the housekeeper fetch out some robes that had been his mother's, and in these antique fittings the lady looked not awkwardly (as you might suppose), but rather like some player in a masque. I know not how 'twas but whereas (saving my respect) I had always been to my dear Master as a brother, close to his heart and thoughts, her coming did at once remove him to a distance from me, so that I looked on the pair as if the daïs were part of some other world than this, and they, pledging each other up there and murmuring in foreign tongues and playing with glances, as two creatures moving through a play or pisky tale without care or burden of living, and yet in the end to be pitied.

My fast broken, I bethought me of our prisoner; and catching up some meats and a flask of wine, hurried to the strong room where he lay. But I found him stretched on his pallet, and turning in a