wery crown. A warm,
balmy breeze that had passed over the orange trees of Sorrento and
Amalfi felt deliciously refreshing to the inhabitants of the capital,
who had succumbed to torpor in the enervating softness of the day.
The whole town was waking from a long siesta, breathing freely after
a sleepy interval; the Molo was covered with a crowd of eager people
dressed out in the brightest colours; the many cries of a festival,
joyous songs, love ditties sounded from all quarters of the vast
amphitheatre, which is one of the chief marvels of creation; they
came to the ears of Joan, and she listened as she bent over her
work, absorbed in deep thought. Suddenly, when she seemed most busily
occupied, the indefinable feeling of someone near at hand, and the touch
of something on her shoulder, made her start: she turned as though
waked from a dream by contact with a serpent, and perceived her husband,
magnificently dressed, carelessly leaning against the back of her
chair. For a long time past the prince had not come to his wife in
this familiar fashion, and to the queen the pretence of affection and
careless behaviour augured ill. Andre did not appear to notice the look
of hatred and terror that had escaped Joan in spite of herself, and
assuming the best expression of gentleness as that his straight hard
features could contrive to put on in such circumstances as these, he
smilingly asked--

"Why are you making this pretty cord, dear dutiful wife?"

"To hang you with, my lord," replied the queen, with a smile.

Andre shrugged his shoulders, seeing in the threat so incredibly rash
nothing more than a pleasantry in rather bad taste. But when he saw that
Joan resumed her work, he tried to renew the conversation.

"I admit," he said, in a perfectly calm voice, "that my question is
quite unnecessary: from your eagerness to finish this handsome piece
of work, I ought to suspect that it is destined for some fine knight of
yours whom you propose to send on a dangerous enterprise wearing your
colours. If so, my fair queen, I claim to receive my orders from your
lips: appoint the time and place for the trial, and I am sure beforehand
of carrying off a prize that I shall dispute with all your adorers."

"That is not so certain," said Joan, "if you are as valiant in war as
in love." And she cast on her husband a look at once seductive and
scornful, beneath which the young man blushed up to his eyes.

"I hope," said Andre, repressing