Copyright, 1908
By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
Published, January, 1908

CONTENTS

Chapter I Of How We Came to Cleeve[ 1]
Chapter II Of the Light that Shone in the Fog[ 17]
Chapter III Of the King’s Errand and of My Lady’s Welcome[ 34]
Chapter IV Of My Lady’s Mission to Exeter[ 55]
Chapter V Of How Three Gentlemen of Devon Drank the King’s Health[ 77]
Chapter VI Of How I Played Knight-Errant and of My Lady’s Gratitude[ 97]
Chapter VII Of Certain Passages in the Rose Garden[ 117]
Chapter VIII Of the Duel in the Wood[ 136]
Chapter IX Of How My Lady Played Delilah[ 156]
Chapter X Of How My Lady Played Delilah—(continued)[ 176]
Chapter XI Of What Befell on the Terrace[ 193]
Chapter XII Of the Gentleman Aboard the Good Ship “Pride of Devon”[ 209]
Chapter XIII Of the Lonely Hut on the Shore[ 230]
Chapter XIV Of the Homecoming of His Grace of Cleeve[ 248]
Chapter XV Of the Coming of the Dutch Dragoons[ 269]
Chapter XVI Of How I Repaid the Debt I Owed My Lady[ 288]

ILLUSTRATIONS

“‘I give the lives of these gentlemen to you. Your secret is your own’” (p. [180])[ Frontispiece]
“Descending the steps, she stood facing me not ten paces distant” facing [ 40]
“‘You!’ my lady gasped in a choking voice” “ [ 90]
“He leaned against its knotted trunk, while the blood dripped steadily upon the grass” “ [ 146]
“A very brief examination sufficed to assure me that the fellow was but stunned” “ [ 224]
“On the threshold stood the Earl of Cleeve himself” “ [ 262]

MY LADY OF CLEEVE

CHAPTER I
OF HOW WE CAME TO CLEEVE

“Yonder is Cleeve!” said the sergeant.

I held up my hand and the troopers halted. The rain, which had been falling steadily since noon, had now ceased; and a watery gleam of sunshine bursting from the sullen stormclouds overhead lighted up the crest of the hill upon which we stood, and the well-wooded Cleeve valley below us, than which there is none more beautiful in all Devonshire. Behind us lay the barren surface of the torrs—mile upon mile of rock-strewn, wind-swept summits—thrusting their gaunt and rugged outlines high into the air in spurs as varied as they were fantastical. But at our feet the ground fell sharply away, covered with a wealth of golden gorse and bracken and scattered clumps of timber that grew ever thicker toward the bottom of the valley; yielding nevertheless the glimpse of a white road which wound its way serpentlike down the centre.

Here and there also the glitter of water showed through the trees, where some streamlet kissed by the sun’s rays shone with the radiance of burnished silver. From thence the woods rose in one dense mass upon the opposite slope, until they broke at length upon the very edge of the rocky cliffs that guard this portion of the coast, and beyond these again were the dark green waters of the Channel.