"Clorinda," he began breathlessly, through set teeth.

She could have left him and not answered, but she chose to restrain the pace of her wild beast for a moment and look at him.

"'Your ladyship!'" she corrected his audacity. "Or--'my Lady Dunstanwolde.'"

"This morning," she said, "I found a letter in a casket in my closet. I do not know the mad villain who wrote it. I never knew him."

"You did not," he cried, with an oath, and then laughed scornfully.

"The letter lies in ashes on the hearth," she said. "'Twas burned unopened. Do not ride so close, Sir John, and do not play the madman and the beast with the wife of my Lord Dunstanwolde."

"'The wife!'" he answered. "'My lord!' 'Tis a new game this, and well played, by God!"

She did not so much as waver in her look, and her wide eyes smiled.