She would never have
been handsome, and though she was only a few years over twenty, she
was beginning to look weather-beaten and careworn, like the market
women about her, mothers of half-a-dozen children.
Now and then she saw Emlyn in all her young, plump beauty, but
looking much quieter, and always coming to her for news of Steadfast.
There were even tears in those bright eyes when she heard how much he
suffered. The girl had evidently been greatly sobered by the results
of her indiscretion, and the treachery into which it had led her.
She probably cared more for Steadfast than for anyone else except
herself, and was shocked and grieved at his condition; and she had
moreover discovered how her credulity had been played upon, and that
she had had a narrow escape of being carried off by a buccaneer.
Her master too had been called to order by the authorities, fined and
threatened for permitting Royalist plots to be hatched in his house.
He had been angered by the younger Ayliffe's riotous doings, and his
wife had been terrified.
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