e was very tall, and
slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an extreme
lustre, like the gleam of undried ink--a lustre at odd times uncanny.
Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day doubly sombre by contrast
with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all
curves, and her complexion famous for its brilliancy; only a precisian
would have objected that she possessed the Valois nose, long and thin
and somewhat unduly overhanging the mouth.

To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson-garbed, she paused with
lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge of
noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of hoofs,
a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and above all
a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so she
climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall.

He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept over this
to his face, and there noted how his eyes were blue winter stars under
the tumbled yellow hair, and the flash of his big teeth as he swore
between them. He held a dead fox by the brush, which he was cutting
off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were scaling his huge body in
frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A horse grazed close at hand.

So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body to
the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through the
apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him.
"Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I had not
heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops."
Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon
the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like a
crimson flower green-calyxed: "You are not a nun--Blood of God! you are
the Princess Katharine!"

[Illustration: "SO FOR A HEARTBEAT SHE SAW HIM" _Painting by Howard
Pyle_]

The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing action
horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and demanded how he could
be certain of this.

He answered slowly: "I have seen your portrait. Hah, your portrait!"
he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting in the sunlight.
"There is a painter who merits crucifixion."

She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also of a
fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated:

"You are not a