The Tangled Skein Part 19

She cast down her own, veiling them with her long lashes.

"What eyes could Your Grace best endure for the moment?" she said, with the same tantalizing demureness.

But something magnetic must have pa.s.sed at that moment between these two young people, some subtle current from him to her, which forced the innocent young girl to raise her eyes almost against her will. He looked straight into their wonderful depths, and murmured softly,--

"The very bluest of the blue, and yet so grey, that I should feel they must somehow be green. . . ."

A little shudder had gone through her when first she met his ardent gaze; she tried to free herself from a sudden strange and delicious feeling of obsession, and said with somewhat forced merriment now:

"The Queen has greenish eyes, and Lady Ursula's are grey."

Then she held out the marguerite to him.

"Would you like to know which you love best?" she added. "Consult the marguerite, and take one petal at a time."

But he took the hand which held the flower.

"One petal at a time," he whispered. He took the slender fingers and kissed each in its turn: "This the softest . . . that the whitest . . .

all rose-tipped . . . and a feast for the G.o.ds. . . ."

"My lord! . . ."

"Now you are frowning--you are not angry?"

"Very angry!"

"I'll make amends," he said humbly.

"How?"

"Give me the other hand, and I'll show you."

"Nay! I cannot do that, for we are told that the left hand must never know what the right hand doeth."

"It shall not," he rejoined earnestly, "for I'll tell it a different tale."

"What is it?"

"Give me the hand and you shall know."

Overhead in the green bosquets of yew a group of starlings began to twitter. The sun was just beginning to sink down in the west, throwing round the head of the fair young girl an aureole of gold. He stood watching her, happy in this the supreme moment of his life. A magic veil seemed to envelop him and her, shutting out all that portion of the world which was not poetic and beautiful; and she, the priestess of this exquisite new universe in which he had just entered, was smilingly holding out her dainty hand to him.

He seized it, and a sudden wave of pa.s.sion caused him to bend over it and to kiss its soft rosy palm.

"Nay, my lord," she murmured, confused, "that Your Grace should think of such follies!"

"Yet, when you look at me," he said, "I think of worse follies still."

"Women say that there is no worse folly than to listen to His Grace of Wess.e.x."

"Do you think they are right?"

"How can I tell?"

"By listening to me for half an hour."

"Here, in this garden?"

"No! . . . there! . . . by the river. . . ."

And he pointed beyond the enclosure of the garden, there where the soft evening breeze gently stirred the rushes in the stream.

"Oh! . . . what would everybody say?" she exclaimed in mock alarm.

"Nothing! envy of my good fortune would make them dumb."

"But the Queen will be asking for you, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Lincoln wondering where I am."

"They shall not find us . . . for we'll pull the boat beyond the reeds . . . just you and I alone . . . with the gloaming all round us . . .

and the twitter of the birds when they go to rest. Shall we go? . . ."

Her heart had already consented. His voice was low and persuasive, a strange earnestness seemed to vibrate through it, as he begged her to come with him.

Slowly she began to walk by his side towards the stream. She seemed scarcely alive now, a being from another world wandering in the land of dreams. He said nothing more, for the world was too beautiful for speech. Youth, love, delight were coursing through his veins, and as he led the young girl towards the bank it seemed to him as if he were taking her away from this dull world of prose and humanity, far, far away through mysterious golden gates beyond the sunset, to a land where she would reign as queen.

The river beckoned to them, and the soft, misty horizon seemed to call.

The intoxicating odour of summer's dying roses filled the air, whilst in the distance across the stream a nightingale began to sing.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ULTIMATUM

The envoy of His Holiness had departed.

Mary Tudor had dismissed her ladies, for she wished to speak with the Cardinal de Moreno alone.

Throughout the audience with the papal Nuncio, His Eminence had already seen the storm-clouds gathering thick and fast on the Queen's brow. His Grace of Wess.e.x, gone to fetch a breviary left accidentally on the terrace-coping, had been gone half an hour, and moreover had not yet returned.

Her Majesty had sent a page to request His Grace's presence. The page returned with the intimation that His Grace could not be found.

Someone had spied him in the distance walking towards the river, in company with a lady dressed in white.

Then the storm-clouds had burst.

The Queen peremptorily ordered every one out of the room, then she turned with real Tudor-like fury upon His Eminence.