oved, and held at the point that he was quite
blind to the change it signaled. He bent his eyes on his horse's mane.
He thought of the King's words as to the kerchief and longed for a bit
of his astute penetration and wonderful tact, that he might solve this
provoking riddle beside him and lead up to what was beating so fiercely
in his breast. In his perplexity he looked appealingly toward her.

She was watching him with the same amused smile she had worn since the
fixing of the skirt; and was guessing, with womanly intuition, what was
passing in his mind.

"And forsooth, Sir King of the Bow," she said--and the smile rippled
into a laugh--"are you so puffed up by your victory that you will not
deign to address me, but must needs hold yourself aloof, even when
there is none to see your condescension! . . . Perchance even to ride
beside me will compromise your dignity. Proceed. . . Proceed. . . I
can follow; or wait for the grooms or the scullions with the victual
carts."

And this only increased De Lacy's amazement and indecision.

"Why do you treat me so?" he demanded.

"Do you not like my present mood?" she asked. "Yea, verily, that I do!
but it is so novel I am bewildered. . . My brain is whirling. . . You
are like a German escutcheon: hard to read aright."

"Then why try the task?"

"I prefer the task," he answered. "It may be difficult, yet it has its
compensations."

"You flatterer," she exclaimed; and for an instant the smile became
almost tender.

"Pardieu! . . . You grow more inexplicable still. . . Yesterday I
would have been rated sharply for such words and called presumptuous
and kindred names."

"And what of to-day . . . if that were yesterday?"

"To-day! . . . To-day! . . . It has been the mirror of all the
yesterdays since the happy one that gave me first sight of you at
Pontefract; . . . and the later one when, ere I rode back to London, I
begged a favor--the kerchief you had dropped by accident--and was
denied." . . . He drew Selim nearer. . . "To-day I again secured your
kerchief; and though I wished to keep it sorely as I wished before to
keep the other, yet like it, too, I could only give it back. And now,
even as I begged before, I beg again for the favor. Will you not grant
it?"

The smile faded and her face went serious.

"Do you not forget the words of that first refusal," she asked, "that
'Beatrix de Beaumont grants neither gage nor favor until she plights
her