“You seem en fête,” he murmurs into the pink ear that is so close to his lips.
“But only for you; you remember my lord commanded me no guests.”
“And you obeyed me?”
“Yes—are you not to be my lord?”
“You heed my behests as well as you would your father’s?” laughs Chester.
“Oh, much better! Papa says that I’m his tyrant and the real Viceroy of the Netherlands, but that isn’t true,” says the girl intensely; then sighs: “If I were this would be a different land”—next cries out harshly: “But don’t talk of it. Keep me from brooding over what has caused me so many tears. Let me only remember we are here together—happy! And I’m going to make you very happy to-night, my Guido.”
“Impossible to make me happier than I am,” whispers Chester, looking in rapture at the beauty he now thinks so nearly is his own.
“Oh yes I can. You don’t know what I’ve prepared for you. It seemed to me we didn’t entertain you properly last evening. I would have spoken to the Countess de Pariza had she come to-day, and had rebec players from Antwerp to give us music floating on the water outside the windows. That would have been romantic as the troubadours and Venetian night, would it not, my Guido?”
“That shall be my business next time,” mutters the enraptured Chester.
“But still I’ve done the best I can for you. My Moorish girls shall play and dance for you later—at present I will amuse you myself. I feared from your remark last night you thought I had no accomplishments. Listen!” And despite Guy’s protests that he would sooner do nothing but make love, his sweetheart, seizing from a near-by chair a mandolin with which she has apparently been passing the time until he came, [[231]]sits down and looking in his face, plays a pretty little prelude. Then the voice that the Dutch Sea Beggar said was like the angel’s tone in the organ at Amsterdam, sings for him a Moorish melody, soft, tropical, languid, with that grace and lightness that only belong to sunny Italy and Spain. This emphasized and made piquantly charming by languid yet impassioned glances, puts Guy beside himself, and the song finishes with a little gasp of surprise; for the last note, though intended for his ear, is deposited right in the long drooping mustache of her betrothed, and shortened in a way unknown to scientific music.