Once more her train put itself into motion. Lords and ladies, lips that smiled and hearts all busy with the next link in Ambition's golden chain, on they swept into the pleasant outer air. The one man of the motley throng of suitors to whom Elizabeth had spoken rose from his knee, picked up his frieze coat, and turned a face that might have gone unrecognized of friend or foe towards the door by which he had entered the gallery. IX Giles Arden, having ridden far as required the tale of miles from the tavern of the Triple Tun, came, upon a sunshiny afternoon of early spring, to an oak knoll where one might halt to admire a fair picture of an old house set in old gardens. Old were the trees that shadowed it, and ivy darkened all its walls; without sound a listless beauty breathed beneath the pale blue skies; for all the sunshine and the bourgeoning of the spring, the picture seemed but sombrely rich, but sadly sweet. To the lips of a light-of-heart there was that in its quality had brought a sigh: as for Arden, when he had checked his horse he looked upon the scene with a groan, then presently for very mirthlessness, laughed. "That day," he said to himself with a grimace--"that day when we forsook our hawking, and dismounting on this knoll, planned for him his new house! There should be the front, there the tower, there the great room where the Queen should lie when she made progress through these ways! All to be built when, like a tiercel-gentle to his wrist, came more fame, more gold!" The speaker turned in his saddle and looked about him with a rueful smile. "I on yonder mossy stone, and Sidney, chin in hand, full length beneath that oak, and he standing there, his arm about the neck of his gray! And what says monsieur the traitor? 'I like it well as it stands, nor will I tear down what my forefathers built. Plain honor and plain truth are the walls thereof, and encompassed by them, the Queen's Grace may lie down with pride.' Brave words, traitor! Gulls, gulls (saith the world), friend Sidney! For a modicum of thy judgment, Solomon, King of Jewry, I would give (an he would bestow it upon me) my cousin the Earl's great ruby!" He laughed again, then sighed, and gathering up his reins, left the little eminence and trotted on through sun and shade to a vacant, ruinous lodge and a twilit avenue, silent and sad beneath the heavy interlacing of leafy boughs. Closing the vista rose a squat doorway, ivy-hung; and tumbled upon the grass beside it, attacking now a great book and now a russet pippin, lay a lad in a blue jerkin.