"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." 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 passed 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 gods. . . ." "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 passion 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."