“Gentles, I must leave you,” she cried, with a pretty little reverence that included both men. Then in a moment she had slipped out of the pleasaunce and was running down the avenue. In the house she found Halfman. “Quick!” she cried, breathlessly. “Sir Blaise and Mr. Cloud are wrangling yonder like dogs over a bone.”
“Do you wish me to keep the peace between them?” Halfman questioned. Brilliana did not exactly know what she wished. She was fretted at the poor show a King’s man had made before a Puritan; if Sir Blaise could do something to humble the Puritan it might not be wholly amiss. So much Halfman gathered from her jerky scraps of sentences; also, that on no account must the disputants be permitted to come to swords. Halfman nodded, caught up a staff, and ran full tilt to the pleasaunce. The moment his back was turned Brilliana, instead of remaining in the house, came out again, doubled on her course, and dodging among the hedges found herself peeping unseen upon the enclosure she had just quitted and the brawl at its height.
XX
SIR BLAISE PAYS HIS PENALTY
When Brilliana quitted them the two men had regarded each other steadily for a few seconds in silence. Then Sir Blaise spoke.
“You made merry with me just now in ease and safety, a lady being by.”
Evander shrugged his shoulders.
“Had no lady been by I should have been more merry and less tender.”