She leaned against the wall with her hands behind her and looked up at him triumphantly. To her confusion, no answering gleam illumined the young man's darkling eyes.
"Struck home!" he exclaimed, shaking his head querulously. "Perhaps—but where? Do you perchance make a mock of me, Mistress—Mistress——?"
She replied to the inquiry in his manner and tone with disappointment in her voice:
"Mistress Mary Burton, sir, at your service."
Bacon started back a step and a new and eager light leaped into his eyes.
"The daughter of Isaac Burton?" he cried, "soon to be Sir Isaac?"
"The same, sir. Do you know my father?"
"Ay, indeed. 'Twas to seek him I came hither."
Then, starting forward, Bacon poured forth in eager accents a full account of his meeting with Droop in the deserted grove—of how they two had conspired to evade the bailiffs, and of his reasons for borrowing Droop's clothing.
"Conceive, then, my plight, dear lady," he concluded, "when, on reaching London, I found that the few coins which remained to me had been left in the clothes which I gave to this Droop, and I have come hither to implore the temporary aid of your good father."