“For my part, I plead with you on behalf of the Marquis of Bath. He is but a goose, though he carries the feathers of a peacock,” added Nellie.
In their talk they passed along the north side of the garden. Here, a number of trees gave grateful shade in the daytime. A wall beyond, with foliage peeping over it, showed that another smaller enclosure, belonging to some civic dignitary, occupied one of the few open spaces remaining within the city defenses.
At this moment, though darkness had not yet fallen, the gloom cast by the trees rendered persons near at hand indistinct. Their voices must have given warning of their coming, for a tall cavalier, wrapped in a cloak, suddenly stepped from behind a broad-beamed elm.
“Anna!” he said, “and Nellie! But whom else have we here?”
The girls started, and Mowbray would have resented the newcomer’s manner had not Eleanor cried:—
“My brother!”
Anna, too, quickly intervened.
“This is Master Walter Mowbray,” she said, “and his breeding, no less than the help he rendered so freely to-day, warrants more courteous greeting from Sir Thomas Roe.”
The stranger, a young man of dignified appearance, made such amends for the abruptness of his challenge that Mowbray wondered how it happened that so elegant and polished a gentleman should have startled two ladies with a peremptory challenge.
Soon this bewilderment passed. They strolled on in company, and they had not been discoursing five minutes before he discovered that Sir Thomas Roe was favored of Anna if young Beeston was favored of her father.