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"The last thing I remember," said Marian, looking around the unfamiliar room with calmly inquisitive eyes, "was a ball at Kenilworth, whither I went with Lady Stukely. My Lord of Leicester told me that our sovereign lady Queen Bess had signified that she would not excuse me from my turn of duty as bed-chamber-woman; and then he drank to my success at court in red wine, and I drank too. And I was moderate—I only drank two small flagons of red wine, a tankard of sack, and one poor half-gallon of good mulled ale."

Lady Marian uttered this quite composedly, but to say that Macfarren was completely staggered is hardly putting it strong enough, particularly as she finished up by adding with an air of charming modesty, "I was too bashful to take more!"

Macfarren gasped as he looked at her, but if she had told him that she had drank a brewery dry, it could not have dissolved the instant magic charm that her grace and beauty had laid softly upon him. In fact his only comment when the Lady Marian looked at him inquiringly, as if to ask his opinion, was—