right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so!
Boy indeed I am--or have been--without a thought in my head but of
her. The sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the
winnowing fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me
take a side, though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I
shall take the side that seems to me the right one, were all the
fair Dorothies of the universe on the other. In very truth I should
be somewhat sorry to find the king and the bishops in the right,
lest my lady should flatter herself and despise me that I had chosen
after her showing, forsooth! This is master Herbert's doing, for
never before did I hear her speak after such fashion.'

While he thus spoke with himself, he stood, like the genius of the
spot, a still dusky figure on the edge of the night, into which his
dress of brown velvet, rich and sombre at once in the sunlight, all
but merged. Nearly for the first time in his life he was
experiencing the difficulty of making up his mind, not, however,
upon any of the important questions, his inattention to which had
exposed him to such sudden and unexpected severity, but merely as to
whether he should seek her again in the company of her mother and
Mr. Herbert, or return home. The result of his deliberation,
springing partly, no doubt, from anger, but that of no very virulent
type, was, that he turned his back on the alley, passed through a
small opening in the yew hedge, crossed a neglected corner of
woodland, by ways better known to him than to any one else, and came
out upon the main road leading to the gates of his father's park.