s to give an account of her sister's feelings
(which, to put it mildly, anticipates the truth very considerably), and
also to cry over him a little.[72] She takes him to Saleuces,[73] an
island principality of her own, and there she and her maid-of-honour,
Persewis (see above), proceed to cocker and cosset him up exactly as one
imagines two such girls would do to "a dear, silly, nice, handsome
thing," as a favourite modern actress used to bring down the house by
saying, with a sort of shake, half of tears and half of laughter, in her
voice. Indeed the phrase fits Partenopeus precisely. We are told that
Urraca would have been formally in love with him if it had not been
unsportsgirl-like towards her sister; and as for Persewis, there is once
more a windfall in the description of the "butter-cup's" delight when
Urraca, going to see Melior, has to leave her alone with the Count. The
Princess is of course very sorry to go. "But Persewis would not have
minded if she had stayed forty days, or till August," and she "glories
greatly" when her rival departs. No mischief, however, comes of it; for
the child is "too young," as we are earnestly assured, and Partenopeus,
to do him justice, is both too much of a gentleman, and too dolefully in
earnest about recovering Melior, to dream of any.

Meanwhile, Urraca is most unselfishly doing her very best to reconcile
the lovers, not neglecting the employment of white fibs as before, and
occasionally indulging, not merely in satiric observation on poor
Melior's irresolution and conflict of feeling, but in decidedly sisterly
plainness of speech, reminding the Empress that after all she had
entrapped Partenopeus into loving her, and that he had, for two whole
years, devoted himself entirely to her love and its conditions. At last
a rather complicated and not always quite consistently told provisional
settlement is arrived at, carrying out, in a manner, the undertakings
referred to by Melior in her first interview with her lover. An immense
tourney for the hand of Melior is to be held, with a jury of kings to
judge it: and everybody, Christian or pagan, from emperor to vavasour is
invited to compete. But in case of no single victor, a kind of
"election" by what may be called the States of Byzantium--kings, dukes,
counts, and simple fief-holders--is to decide, and it seems sometimes
as if Melior retained something of a personal veto at last. Of the
incidents and episodes before this actually c