The day had gone eventfully at the goldsmith's house. In the morning Master Etheridge announced that he would give a supper, with dancing, that night, to show his pleasure at Sir Peregrine's recovery and arrival. This was an age when rich citizens missed no occasion for festivity. So there was much bustle of sending servants with invitations, hiring a band of musicians, cooking meats and fowls and birds, making cakes and marchpane and pasties, and other doings. Millicent uttered no plaint or protest; the time of pleadings and tears on her side, arguments and threats on her father's, was past; many and long had been the scenes between the two, such as were not uncommon in that age, and such as Shakespeare has represented in the brief passage between "Juliet" and her parents, and these had left the goldsmith firm as rock, Millicent weak and hopeless of resisting his will.
As for Sir Peregrine, he had never thought it necessary to urge; he took it for granted she adored him—what lady had not?—and that in her heart she counted herself supremely blessed in being picked out for him. He attributed her aloofness and sulkiness, even her outbursts of spoken detestation, to shyness, girlish perverseness, sense of unworthiness of the honour of his hand, and chiefly to jealousy of his former wives and present admirers. So he serenely ignored all signs of her feelings.
She bore her part in the day's preparations, a little uneasy in mind lest the festivities might prevent her appointed meeting at nightfall. She could not help counting much upon this new acquaintance; he seemed a man of such resource and ingenuity, and such willingness to deliver her, even though he was betrothed to another—what a pity he was betrothed! She checked herself, with a blush; but all the same she had an intuition that the other woman would not be the best wife for him.
So it befell that, as Ravenshaw approached the house at dark, he saw all the windows light, and from the open ones came forth the sounds of music, laughter, and gay voices. Nevertheless, he pushed gently at the Friday Street gate, which gave as he had hoped, and found himself alone in the garden. He softly closed the gate, went into the shadow of the apple-tree, and waited.
With his eyes upon the place where she must appear in coming from the house, he listened to the music of a stately dance,—the thin but elegant and spirit-like music of the time, produced on this occasion by violins, flutes, and shawms. When the strains died, they were soon followed by bursts of laughter from the open dining-room windows; then, presently, in the moonlight, he saw the figure he awaited. With a golden caul upon her head, and wearing the long robe and train necessary to the majestic pavan which she had recently been dancing, she glided across the turf, and stopped before him.
"You have come from great mirth," whispered the captain, looking toward the windows whence the laughter proceeded.
"It enabled me to escape," she whispered in reply. "They are listening to the tales of one Master Vallance; he has been telling of the rogueries of a rascal named Ravenshaw, a disbanded captain that swaggers about the town."
He stared at her, with open eyes and limp jaw; in a vague way he remembered one Master Vallance as a gallant who had insulted him one night in the Windmill tavern, the night he first met Master Holyday. Luckily, she did not notice his expression.
"As for me," she finished, "I think no better of gentlemen like Master Vallance for knowing such foul knaves."