Tiffany paused in the archway and jerked her thumb over her shoulder
in the direction of the house. Brilliana shrugged her shoulders,
impatient of Master Paul's denseness.
"If you find gold in your search for steel, so much the better. Come,
come, this is your happy time, for I am told Master Rainham is
abroad."
She gave a glance for confirmation at Halfman, who lounged forward.
"That he is," he asserted, briskly. "He has gone a-marketing."
"Then to it at once!" Brilliana cried, eying the waverer
encouragingly. "Take such of my people as you will. You will find
some at the stables yonder," and as she spoke she pointed in the
direction opposite to the house. "Master Rainham's miserliness keeps
but a small retinue. You will meet with no resistance. Go forth, my
knight."
Master Paul almost skipped with delight and he cracked his fingers
vigorously. He seemed even less pleasing merry than terrified.
"You call me your knight." He turned and took Halfman to witness.
"She calls me her knight. I'll do it. I'll do it," he voiced,
exultingly.
Brilliana, with strenuous self-restraint, seemed to applaud his
antics.
"Bravely said, Chivalry!" she cried. "Let it be done, and well done,
ere dusk."
Master Paul quavered before her in an ecstasy of delighted obedience.
"I fly, enchantress--I fly!" he chirruped. Then, as he turned to go,
another thought struck him, and he entreated, grotesquely
languishing, "Prithee, your hand to kiss first."
Brilliana denied him affably.
"By-and-by, maybe, as the prize of your triumph. Farewell."
After sundry strange scrapings, Master Hungerford took his departure
in the direction of the stables. As soon as his back was turned,
Brilliana questioned her maid.
"Well, Tiffany, is it Master Rainham?"
"Ay, my lady," Tiffany answered, demurely. She knew there was some
manner of mystification forward and yearned for the key to it. "He
chafes in the music-chamber."
"Send him here top-speed," Brilliana commanded. With a whisk of
flying skirts Tiffany scuttered back to the house, and Brilliana
turned to Halfman, the laughter in her eyes seeking and finding the
laughter in his.
"Well," she said, "our angling prospers blithely. We have tickled one
fish. Now for the other chub."
Halfman, who had been swaying with silent merriment ever since the
departure of Master Paul, suddenly grew steady again and looked
warnings.
"He asks for another kind of angling, as I gather," he suggested.
Brilliana looked daintily wise.
"As I bait the hook I believe I will land him. It will be rare if I
can make Paul rob Peter while Peter plunders Paul. How dare they be
so close-fisted while the King's flag is flying and England's honor
in peril!"
If she said this with any idea of palliating the possible lawlessness
of her action in the eyes of her companion, she wasted her words.
Halfman had not been so happy since his return to England, not even
in the briskest days of the siege, as he was now in the staging of
this lawless comedy. The old pirate jigged in him at this fair maid's
strategy.
"By St. Nicholas," he swore, "they should be bled white for a brace
of knaves! This, I take it, is your other honor-bankrupt atomy."