"My eyes, since this afternoon, see you constantly where you are not--how could they fail to see you where you are?"
"Then, as Your Grace has seen me . . ." she added with timid nervousness, seeing that he now stood between her and the steps, "will you allow me to go up again?"
"No."
"I entreat!" she pleaded.
"Impossible."
"Her Grace of Lincoln will be looking for me."
"Then stay here with me until she does."
"What to do?" she queried innocently.
"To make me happy."
"Happy?" she laughed merrily. "Ho! ho! ho! How can I, a humble waiting-maid, manage to make His Grace of Wess.e.x happy?"
"By letting me look at you."
With quaint and artless coquetry she picked up the folds of her heavy brocaded paniers, right and left, with two delicate fingers, and executed a dainty pirouette in front of him.
"There!" she said merrily, ""tis done. . . . And now?"
"By letting me whisper to you . . ." he murmured.
She drew back quickly, and said with mock severity--
"That which I must not hear."
"Why not?"
"Because Your Grace is not free," she rejoined archly. "Not free to whisper anything in any woman"s ear, save in that of Lady Ursula Glynde."
"Then you guessed what I would have whispered to you?"
"Perhaps."
"What was it?"
She veiled the glory of her eyes with their fringe of dark lashes.
"That you loved me . . ." she murmured, "for the moment. . . ."
How irresistible she was, with just that soupcon of coquetry to whet the desire of this fastidious man of the world, and with it all so free from artifice, so young and fresh and pure:--a madonna, yet made to tempt mankind.
"Nay! if you would let me, sweet saint, I would whisper in your tiny ear that I worship you!" he said in all sincerity and truth, and with the ring of an ardent pa.s.sion in every tone of his voice.
"Worship me? . . ." she queried in mock astonishment, "and Your Grace does not even know who I am."
"Faith! but I do. You are the most beautiful woman on this earth."
"Oh! . . . but my name! . . ."
"Nay! as to that I care not . . . You shall tell it me anon, if you like. . . . For the moment I love to think of you as I first beheld you in the garden this afternoon--a fairy or sprite . . . I know not which . . . an angel mayhap . . . in your robes of white, surrounded with flowers and dark bosquets of hazelnut and of yew, with golden tints of ruddy autumn around you, less glorious than your hair. Let me worship blindly . . . fettered . . . your slave."
She sighed, a quaint little sigh, which had a tinge of melancholy in it.
"For how long?" she murmured.
"For my whole life," he replied earnestly. "Will you not try me?"
"How?"
"You love me, sweet saint?"
"I . . ." she began shyly.
"Let me look into your eyes. . . . I will find my answer."
Her arms dropped by her side, she looked up and met his eyes, ardent, burning with pa.s.sion, fixed longingly upon her. He came close to her, quite close, his presence thrilled her; she closed her eyes in order to shut out from her innermost soul everything from the outside world, save the exquisite feeling of her newly awakened love.
"Now, see how perverse I am," he whispered pa.s.sionately. "I do not want you to tell me anything just now . . . open your eyes, dear saint . . .
for I but want to stand like this . . . and read in their blue depths . . . enjoying every fraction of a second of this heavenly moment.
She tried to speak, but instinctively he stopped her.
"No . . . no . . . do not speak. . . . And yet . . . "tis from your sweet lips I"d have my final answer."
He took her in his arms. She lay against him, unresisting, her sweet face turned up to his, soul meeting soul at last in the ecstasy of a first kiss. He held her to his heart. It seemed as if he could never let her go from him again. Everything was forgotten, the world had ceased to be. For him there was but one woman on this earth, and she was his own.
CHAPTER XXIII
CHECK TO THE QUEEN
How long they stood thus, heart to heart, they themselves could never have said. The sound of many voices in the near distance roused them from their dream. Ursula started in alarm.
"Holy Virgin!" she exclaimed under her breath, "if it should be the Queen!"
But Wess.e.x held her tightly, and she struggled in vain.
"Nay! then let the whole Court see that I hold my future wife in my arms," he said proudly.