and Sir George put down the chair.

"Leave my house at once," he said in a whisper of rage.

"If you are on my premises in one hour from now I will have you flogged
from my door by the butcher."

"What have I done?" cried Dorothy. "What have I done?"

"Your regrets come late, Mistress Vernon," said I.

"She shall have more to regret," said Sir George, sullenly. "Go to your
room, you brazen, disobedient huzzy, and if you leave it without my
permission, by God, I will have you whipped till you bleed. I will teach
you to say 'I won't' when I say 'you shall.' God curse my soul, if I don't
make you repent this day!"

As I left the room Dorothy was in tears, and Sir George was walking the
floor in a towering rage. The girl had learned that I was right in what I
had told her concerning her father's violent temper.

I went at once to my room in Eagle Tower and collected my few belongings
in a bundle. Pitifully small it was, I tell you.

Where I should go I knew not, and where I should remain I knew even less,
for my purse held only a few shillings--the remnant of the money Queen
Mary had sent to me by the hand of Sir Thomas Douglas. England was as
unsafe for me as Scotland; but how I might travel to France without money,
and how I might without a pass evade Elizabeth's officers who guarded
every English port, even were I supplied with gold, were problems for