Merrylips shook her head.
"I am kin to no Roundhead," she answered.
Mr. Lowry seemed not at all angry.
"Thy health, for a brisk little shrew!" he laughed. "I've a wife at home would be fain of a little daughter like unto thee."
Just then Mr. Lowry was called from the room by one of his followers. Indeed Merrylips saw no more of him till she looked from the parlor window, and saw him riding away at the head of his little band. They took with them all the pikes and muskets and snaphances, and even old rusted headpieces and cuirasses that were stored at Larkland, but that was all that they did take. Plainly, they had not guessed that precious jewels were hidden in the house.
"But they may come again," said Lady Sybil, gravely, when Merrylips asked her if all was not now well.
"And a second time," she went on, "the searchers may be ruder. I have no love to Will Lowry, 'tis true, but he bore himself to-day as well as a man might do that hath in hand a hateful and a wicked work. Others might prove less courteous."
"He is an evil man and false," cried Merrylips. She found it easy to believe people false, since she had been so deceived in Rupert. "He said he was my mother's kinsman."
"And so he is, child," Lady Sybil answered. "He is a kinsman to thy mother, and to me also by marriage. He is a gentleman of good estate in the eastern part of the county, and he took to wife my cousin, Elizabeth Fernefould, a sister to the present Duke of Barrisden."
Now Merrylips had always thought of Lady Sybil's father as the duke. Indeed, she had never heard a word of the present Duke of Barrisden. So at the mention of his name she looked puzzled.