Ere long, the merry cadence of an old English song fell with a homelike
sound upon Sidney's ear, and in another moment they were in sight of
Berenger, trotting joyously along, with a bouquet of crimson and
white heather-blossoms in his hand, and his bright young face full of
exultation in his arrangements. He shouted gaily as he saw them, calling
out, 'I thought I should meet you! but I wondered not to have heard the
King's bugle-horn. Where are the rest of the hunters?'

'Unfortunately we have had another sort of hunt to-day,' said Sidney,
who had ridden forward to meet him; 'and one that I fear, will disquiet
you greatly.'

'How! Not her uncle?' exclaimed Berenger.

'No, cheer up, my friend, it was not she who was the object of the
chase; it was this unlucky King,' he added, speaking English, 'who has
been run to earth by his mother.'

'Nay, but what is that to me?' said Berenger, with impatient superiority
to the affairs of the nation. 'How does it touch us?'

Sidney related the abstraction of the young Queen and her ladies, and
then handed over the rose-coloured token, which Berenger took
with vehement ardour; then his features quivered as he read the
needle-pricked words-two that he had playfully insisted on her speaking
and spelling after him in his adopted tongue, then not vulgarized, but
the tenderest in the language, 'Sweet heart.' That was all, but to him
they conveyed constancy to him and his, whatever might betide, and an
entreaty not to leave her to her fate.

'My dearest! never!' he muttered; then turning hastily as he put the
precious token into his bosom, he exclaimed, 'Are their women yet gone?'
and being assured that they were not departed when the two friends had
set out, he pushed his horse on at speed, so as to be able to send
a reply by Veronique. He was barely in time: the clumsy wagon-like
conveyance of the waiting-women stood at the door of the castle, in
course of being packed with the Queen's wardrobe, amid the janglings
of lackeys, and expostulating cries of _femmes de chambre_, all in the
worst possible humour at being crowded up with their natural enemies,
the household of the Queen-mother.

Veronique, a round-faced Angevin girl--who, like her lady, had not
parted with all her rustic simplicity and honesty, and who had been
necessarily taken into their confidence--was standing apart from the
whirl of confusion, holding the leashes of two or three little dogs that
had been confided