Part 23 (2/2)
”Ah! that is a different question; but I answer yes, for I am certain that my intuitions are so true that I could never love a man who was not in every sense a King.”
He smiled indulgently. ”So be it, we will write such a drama and show the world how true love pierces all disguise, and knowing its own, challenges all dangers.”
She listened eagerly, but she attributed an interpretation which he had not intended to his perfectly simple suggestion. Placing her own personality out of the question was impossible for one so absorbed in self as this egoistic young creature. If Henry of Navarre were but like his Amba.s.sador how easy it would be to love him! and suddenly it flashed through her mind that they were indeed one and the same. What other signification could be placed upon this supposit.i.tious drama which they were to evolve together?
Intrigue ran in her blood and distorted her perceptions. Transparent frankness was incomprehensible to her, and it appealed to her romantic imagination that the King of France should come like the hero of some wonder-tale disguised as his own envoy extraordinary to see and woo his princess.
Had she confided this wild idea to the experienced Malespini or to her companion, the dwarf Leonora, whose shrewd intellect was out of all proportion to her stunted body, she might easily have been disabused of her error; but with an overweening confidence in the accuracy of her own judgment she determined to weigh every sentence uttered by the man who purported to be the Earl of Ess.e.x and draw her own conclusions as to his ident.i.ty.
To a mind preconvinced, proofs were not wanting. Brandilancia, fancying that the little fan had fallen from the hand of Marie de' Medici by accident, naively offered to return it. Her face clouded. ”Then you do not care to keep my first gift?” she pouted.
”Your gift? _May_ I then keep it?” he asked delighted.
”In exchange for the ring you wear,” she replied, and he laid it in her hand.
She examined with curiosity the device engraved upon the seal, a gauntleted hand holding a lance in rest.
”Ess.e.x gave me that ring,” he said thoughtlessly, for he was too excited to measure his own words. ”I value it, not because I have a right to the arms it bears, but because he thought me a true knight errant eager for any enterprise of honour and gallantry.”
”Ess.e.x gave it. Then you are not Ess.e.x?” she asked smiling.
”'T was but a slip of the tongue,” he replied confusedly. ”It was the King of France who presented it to me when I joined him with the English auxiliaries at the siege of Rouen. We were much in each other's company, not only in the main business of fighting, but in hawking and hunting in the neighbourhood. It was the enemy's country, and this gave zest to our escapades.” He spoke rapidly but he could not distract her attention from his inadvertent admission.
”Yes,” she commented thoughtfully, ”I have heard that you were friends and comrades in many a wild adventure. Tell me more of the King, since you of all others should know him best.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Neurdein_
Henri IV. receiving the portrait of Marie de Medici
P. P. Rubens
From the series of paintings ordered by her for the Palace of the Luxembourg]
”I know, dear lady, that he loves you.”
”How can that be since he has never seen me?”
”Love enters the heart through many strange portals, and Henry of Navarre knows you better than you suspect. Your portrait sent him by your uncle is engraved upon his heart. Love gives a mysterious power of second sight, and I doubt not that the King of France sees you at this moment even as I do, and that Marie de' Medici is for him as for me the embodiment of all womanly perfection.”
”The Grand d.u.c.h.ess is approaching,” she said in a low voice, ”and Henry of Navarre is a forbidden topic--talk of anything else--talk of art.”
The subject was apropos, for they were in the garden and Ferdinando's collection of masterpieces was all about them, but the Grand d.u.c.h.ess had caught his closing phrase.
”Who is it,” she asked drily, ”who has the honour of being the embodiment of the Earl of Ess.e.x's ideal of womanly perfection?”
”The Medicean Venus,” Brandilancia replied unhesitatingly, with a wave of the hand which took in that famous statue and also the lady at his side.
The Grand d.u.c.h.ess sniffed, she was silenced but not deceived, and she remained at her niece's side through the remainder of the afternoon.
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