"'Tis what one hears often from men, in one form or another," said the girl, coolly, seating herself as she spoke.
"Talk not to me of other men—I'll not brook it!" cried he, advancing toward her a few rapid paces. "Think you I have no heart?" His eye gleamed, and he came on yet a step in his strange wooing. "Your face is here, here," he cried, "deep in my heart! I must always look upon it, or I am a lost man!"
"'Tis a face not so fair as that," said the Lady Catharine, demurely.
"'Tis the fairest face in England, or in the world!" cried her lover; and now he was close at her side. Her hand, she knew not how, rested in his own. Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young woman's nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical, almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity and candor.
"'Tis a face but blemished," said she, slowly, the color rising to her cheek. "See! Here is the birth-mark of the house of Knollys. They tell me—my very good friends tell me, that this is the mark of shame, the bar sinister of the hand of justice. You know the story of our house."
"Somewhat of it," said Law.
"My brother is not served of the writ when Parliament is called. This you know. Tell me why?"
"I know the so-called reason," replied John Law. "'Twas brought out in his late case at the King's Bench."
"True. 'Twas said that my grandfather, past eighty, was not the father of those children of his second wife. There is talk that—"
"'Twas three generations ago, this talk of the Knollys shortcoming. I am not eighty. I am twenty-four, and I love you, Catharine Knollys."