"What will she say, whether she knows of its being within the chamber or not?
She will be angry with me that I have dared to touch it.

What shall I do ?" She regarded it again with eyes almost suffused.

Her blush and the sensibility of her emotion gave to her plain countenance a new liveliness of tint and expression.
"I will put it back where I found it," she said, "and the one who knows it will find it later.

It cannot be she--it cannot be she! If I laid it on her table she would rate me bitterly--and she can be bitter when she will." She bent and placed it within the shadow of the valance again, and as she felt it touch the hard oak of the polished floor her bosom rose with a soft sigh.
"It is an unseemly thing to do," she said; "'tis as though one were uncivil; but I dare not--I dare not do otherwise." She would have turned to leave the apartment, being much overcome by the incident, but just as she would have done so she heard the sound of horses' feet through the window by which she must pass, and looked out to see if it was Clorinda who was returning from her ride.

Mistress Clorinda was a matchless horsewoman, and a marvel of loveliness and spirit she looked when she rode, sitting upon a horse such as no other woman dared to mount--always an animal of the greatest beauty, but of so dangerous a spirit that her riding-whip was loaded like a man's.
This time it was not she; and when Mistress Anne beheld the young gentleman who had drawn rein in the court she started backward and put her hand to her heart, the blood mantling her pale cheek again in a flood.