"But," she said, with a smile whose melting radiance seemed akin to tears--"but see how I have beaten him--and all is passed." "Yes, yes," he said, "as you have conquered all--as you have conquered me--and did from the first hour. But God forbid that you should make me suffer so again." "Your Grace," she said, faltering, "I--I will not!" "Forgive me for the tempest of my passion," he said. "'Twas not thus I had thought to come to make my suit. 'Tis scarcely fitting that it should be so; but I was almost mad when I first heard this rumour, knowing my duty would not loose me to come to you at once--and knowing you so well, that only if your heart had melted to the one who besought you, you would give up." "I--give up," she answered; "I give up." "I worship you," he said; "I worship you." And their meeting eyes were drowned in each other's tenderness. They galloped side by side, and the watchers looked on, exchanging words and glances, seeing in her beauteous, glowing face, in his joyous one, the final answer to the question they had so often asked each other. 'Twas his Grace of Osmonde who was the happy man, he and no other. That was a thing plain indeed to be seen, for they were too high above the common world to feel that they must play the paltry part of outward trifling to deceive it; and as the sun pierces through clouds and is stronger than they, so their love shone like the light of day itself through poor conventions. They did not know the people gazed and whispered, and if they had known it, the thing would have counted for naught with them. "See!" said my lady, patting her Devil's neck--"see, he knows that you have come, and frets no more." They rode homeward together, the great beauty and the great duke, and all the town beheld; and after they had passed him where he stood, John Oxon mounted his own horse and galloped away, white-lipped and with mad eyes. "Let me escort you home," the duke had said, "that I may kneel to you there, and pour forth my heart as I have so dreamed of doing. To-morrow I must go back to France, because I left my errand incomplete. I stole from duty the time to come to you, and I must return as quickly as I came." So he took her home; and as they entered the wide hall together, side by side, the attendant lacqueys bowed to the ground in deep, welcoming obeisance, knowing it was their future lord and master they received. Together they went to her own sitting-room, called the Panelled Parlour, a beautiful great room hung with rare pictures, warm with floods of the bright summer sunshine, and perfumed with bowls of summer flowers; and as the lacquey departed, bowing, and closed the door behind him, they turned and were enfolded close in each other's arms, and stood so, with their hearts beating as surely it seemed to them human hearts had never beat before. "Oh! my dear love, my heavenly love!" he cried. "It has been so long--I have lived in prison and in fetters--and it has been so long!"