The Tangled Skein Part 18

She looked divinely pretty as she stood there before him, a delicate, nervous little blush suffusing her young cheeks, her eyes veiled by a fringe of lashes slightly darker than her golden hair. As dainty a picture as this fastidious man had ever gazed upon.

"At your feet, fair one," he replied, with undisguised admiration expressed in his every look, "and burning with jealousy at thought of him, for whose sake your sweet fingers plucked the petal of that marguerite."

She still held the flower, half stripped of its petals; he put out his hand in order to take it from her, or perhaps merely for the sake of touching for one second the soft velvet of her own.

Harry Plantagenet, close by, had stretched himself out lazily in the sun.

"Oh!" said Ursula, a little confused, still a little shy and nervous, "that . . . that was for a favourite brother who is absent . . . and I wished to know if he had not forgotten me."

"Impossible," he replied with deep conviction, "even for a brother."

"Your Grace is pleased to flatter."

"The truth spoken to one so fair must ever seem a flattery."

"Your Grace. . . ."

He loved to watch the colour come and go in her face, the dainty, girlish movements, simple and unaffected, that little curl which looked like living gold beside the small, sh.e.l.l-like ear. His pa.s.sionate love for the beautiful was more than satiated at the exquisite picture before him, and then she had such a musical and tender voice; he had heard her singing just now.

"But you seem to know me, fair one," he said after a while.

"Who does not know His Grace of Wess.e.x?" she responded, making a pretty curtsy.

"Then let me be even with you, sweet singer, and tell me your name."

Ursula darted a sudden shy look at him. Obviously he was conveying the truth; he did not know who she was.

A quick thought crossed her mind; she looked demurely down her nose and said placidly,--

"My name is f.a.n.n.y."

"f.a.n.n.y?"

"Yes . . . you do not like it?"

"I didn't before," he said with a smile, "but now I adore it."

"I am getting to like it better too," she added thoughtfully.

"But, sweet f.a.n.n.y, tell me how is it I never have seen you before."

"Your Grace does not know all the ladies of the Court."

"No! but I thought I knew all the pretty ones. Yet meseems that beauty was but an empty word now that I have seen its queen."

"Ah, my lord! I fear me your reputation doth not wrong you after all!"

she added with a quaint little sigh.

"Why? What is my reputation?"

"They call you fickle, and say the Duke of Wess.e.x loves many women a little . . . but constantly, not at all."

He came a step closer to her, and tried to meet her eyes.

"Then will you let me prove them wrong?" he said with sudden seriousness, which perhaps then he could not himself have accounted for.

"I? . . ." she said artlessly, "what must I do for that?"

"Anything you like," he replied.

"Nay, I have no power; for I fear me nothing short of putting Your Grace under lock and key would cure you of that fickleness."

"Then put me under lock and key," he suggested gaily.

"In an inaccessible tower?"

"Wherever you please."

She gave a merry, happy little laugh, for he was standing quite close to her now, his proud head slightly bent so that the quick, whispered words might easily reach her ears; and there was an unmistakable look of ardent admiration in his eyes. A demon of mischief suddenly seized her.

She wondered whether he had guessed who she was and tried to nettle him into betraying himself.

"And to whom shall I give the key of that tower?" she said demurely. "To the Lady Ursula Glynde?"

"No," he replied. "Come inside and throw the key out of the window."

"But the Lady Ursula?" she persisted.

He made a quick gesture of mock impatience.

"What wanton cruelty to mention that name now," he said, "when mine ears are tuned to 'f.a.n.n.y.'"

"Tis wrong they should be so tuned--Lady Ursula, they say, is your promised wife."

"But I do not love her . . . never could love her whilst----

"They say she is not ill-favoured."

"Ill-favoured to me, like the bitter pills the medicine man gives us, whilst you----"

Once more she interrupted him quickly.

"You have never seen her," she protested, "you do not even know what she is like."

"Nay, I can guess. The Glyndes are all alike--sandy, angular, large-footed. . . ."

She laughed, a long, merry, rippling laugh which set his ears tingling with the desire to hear it once again. Ursula was indeed enjoying herself thoroughly.

"They all have brown eyes," he continued gaily, "and just now I feel as if I could not endure brown eyes."