edly.

Still he forbore to qualify his manner, save with a latent smile that
further exasperated the girl.

"What mean you, gentle mistress?" he asked quietly, without even
looking at her.

"'Sweet Jacqueline!' 'Gentle mistress!' you are profuse with soft
words!" she cried sharply.

"And yet they turn you not from anger."

"Anger!" she said, her eyes flashing. "Not another man at court would
dare to talk to me as you do."

At this he lifted his brows and surveyed her much as one would a
spoiled child, a glance that excited in her the same emotion she had
experienced the night of his arrival in Fools' hall, when he had
contemplated her in her garb of Joculatrix, as some misplaced anomaly.

"I know, mistress," he returned ironically, "you have a reputation for
sorcery. But I think it lies more in your eyes than in the moon."

"And yet I can see the future for all that," she replied, persistently,
defiantly.

"The future?" he retorted, and looked from the earth to the sky. "What
is the goal of yonder tiny cloud? Can you tell me that?"

"The goal?" she repeated, uplifting her head. "Wait! It is very
small. The sun is already swallowing it up."

"Heigho!" yawned the jester, outstretching his yellow-pointed boot, "I
catch not the moral to the fable--an there be one!

"The moral!" she said, quickly. "Ask Marot."

"Why Marot?" Balancing the stick with the fool's head in his hand.

"Because he dared love Queen Marguerite!" she answered impetuously.
"The fool in motley; the lady in purple! How he jested at her wedding!
How he wept when he thought himself alone!"

"He had but himself to blame, Jacqueline," returned the other with
composure, although his eyes were now bent straight before him. "He
could not climb to her; she could not stoop to him. Yet I daresay, it
was a mad dream he would not have foregone."

"Not have foregone!" she exclaimed, quickly. "What would he not have
given to tear it from his breast; aye, though he tore his heart with
it! That day, bright and fair, when Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre,
took her in his arms and kissed her brow! When amid gay festivities
she became his bride! Not have foregone? Yes; Marot would forego that
day--and other days."

Still that inertia; that irritating immobility. "What a tragic tale
for a summer day!" was his only comment.

"And Caillette!" she continued, rapidly. "Distinguished in mien,
graceful in manner. In the house of his patro