I love the fellow, and ye would have made a handsome pair." Mistress Clorinda laughed, sitting straight in her saddle, her fine eyes unblenching, though the sun struck them.
"We had fortunes to match," she said--"I was a beggar and he was a spendthrift.

Here comes Lord Dunstanwolde." And as the gentleman rode near, it seemed to his dazzled eyes that the sun so shone down upon her because she was a goddess and drew it from the heavens.
In the west wing of the Hall 'twas talked of between Mistress Wimpole and her charges, that a rumour of Sir John Oxon's marriage was afloat.
"Yet can I not believe it," said Mistress Margery; "for if ever a gentleman was deep in love, though he bitterly strove to hide it, 'twas Sir John, and with Mistress Clorinda." "But she," faltered Anne, looking pale and even agitated--"she was always disdainful to him and held him at arm's length.

I--I wished she would have treated him more kindly." "'Tis not her way to treat men kindly," said Mistress Wimpole.
But whether the rumour was true or false--and there were those who bestowed no credit upon it, and said it was mere town talk, and that the same things had been bruited abroad before--it so chanced that Sir John paid no visit to his relative or to Sir Jeoffry for several months.

'Twas heard once that he had gone to France, and at the French Court was making as great a figure as he had made at the English one, but of this even his kinsman Lord Eldershawe could speak no more certainly than he could of the first matter.
The suit of my Lord of Dunstanwolde--if suit it was--during these months appeared to advance somewhat.

All orders of surmises were made concerning it--that Mistress Clorinda had privately quarrelled with Sir John and sent him packing; that he had tired of his love-making, as 'twas well known he had done many times before, and having squandered his possessions and finding himself in open straits, must needs patch up his fortunes in a hurry with the first heiress whose estate suited him.