"A good beginning indeed!" she said. "You are in favor, my lord! To have seen her fair face is no small boast, but to be summoned to her presence--I cannot remember her so gracious to any one, since--" she paused suddenly, deliberately. Tristan regarded her slantwise over his shoulder, without making response. At last, irritated, he knew not why, he asked curtly: "What is your mistress?" The girl's glance wandered over the great trees and flowers that overshadowed the plaisaunce. "She bears her mother's name," she replied with a shrug, "and, like her mother, the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire that glitters in the stars in heaven, a fire affording neither light nor heat, but serving to dazzle, to bewilder.--I am but a woman, but--had I your chance of fortune, my lord, I should think twice, ere I bartered it for a vow, an empty dream." He gave her a swift glance, wondering at her woman's wit, yet resenting her speech. "You would prosper?" she queried tentatively at last, casting about in her mind, how she might win his confidence. "I have business of my own," he replied, evading her question. She looked up at him, her eyes trembling into his. "How tall and strong you are! I could almost find it in my heart to love you myself!" The flattery seemed so spontaneous that it would have puzzled one possessed of greater guile than Tristan to have uncovered her cunning. Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her; for the moment he was almost tempted to continue questioning her regarding her mistress. "You may make your fortune in Rome," the girl said with a meaning smile. "How so?" "Are you blind? Do you not know a woman's ways? My mistress loves a strong arm. You may serve her." "That is not possible!" The girl stared at him and for the moment dropped the mask of innocence. "What was possible once, is possible again," she said. Then she added: "Are you not ambitious?" "I have a task to perform that may not permit of two masters! Why are you so concerned?" The question came almost abruptly. "I serve my lady!" she said, edging towards him. "Is it so strange a thing to serve a woman?" They had left the garden and had arrived before a high stone wall that skirted the precincts of Theodora's palace. Cypresses and bays raised their tops above the stones. Great cedars cast deep shadows. In the wall there was a door studded with heavy iron nails. The girl took a key that dangled from her girdle, unlocked the door and beckoned to Tristan to enter. Tristan stood and gazed. In the light of the moon which drenched all things he saw a garden in which emerald grass plots alternated with beds of strange-tinted orchids, flowers purple and red. At the end of the plaisaunce there opened an orange thicket and under the trees stood a woman clad in crimson, her white arms bare. She wore sandals of silver, and her dusky hair was confined in a net of gold.