you remember Cumnor-Place, the old mansion-house beside the churchyard?”
“By the same token, I robbed the orchard three times—what of that?—It was the old Abbot’s residence when there was plague or sickness at Abingdon.”
“Ay,” said the host, “but that has been long over; and Anthony Foster hath a right in it, and lives there by some grant from a great courtier, who had the church-lands from the crown; and there he dwells, and has as little to do with any poor wight in Cumnor, as if he were himself a belted knight.”
“Nay,” said the mercer, “it is not altogether pride in Tony neither—there is a fair lady in the case, and Tony will scarce let the light of day look on her.”
“How!” said Tressilian, who now for the first time interfered in their conversation, “did ye not say this Foster was married, and to a precisian?”
“Married he was, and to as bitter a precisian as ever eat flesh in Lent; and a cat-and-dog life she led with Tony, as men said. But she is dead, rest be with her, and Tony hath but a slip of a daughter; so it is thought he means to wed this stranger, that men keep such a coil about.”
“And why so?—I mean, why do they keep a coil about her?” said Tressilian.
“Why, I wot not,” answered the host, “except that men say she is as beautiful as an angel, and no one knows whence she comes, and every one wishes to know why she is kept so closely mewed up. For
