"Ah, well. I am peculiar in my tastes. In place of this brilliant ballroom, I should like to be seated at a tournament. I should like to see the knights with their banners and waving plumes, in the lists—the ladies in their balconies all hung with cloth of gold—the queen of beauty with the prize. Ah, me! in those days, ladies had knights and men were heroes."
As he looked at her, his whole soul shone in his eyes.
"And I, too," he cried. "I love those days ten thousand times better than these."
"Do you?" asked her ladyship with admiring eyes, "how strange! It is not long since I was speaking to one whom I may call a young man of the period, and his reply was, 'Horrid bore, those kind of things were, Lady Lisle,' and I thought most young men were of his opinion."
"I am not," said Basil, "I love those knights and heroes of old! great men and grand men who were content to ride forth, and to battle unto death for a woman's smile."
She raised her radiant eyes to his.
"Would you do that much for a woman's smile, Mr. Carruthers?"
He paused a moment before speaking, then said: "For one such woman as those men loved, I would." She sighed deeply; the jewels on her white breast gleamed and glistened.
"Ah, you think, then, that the glorious race of women heroes loved and died for, have disappeared?"
"I thought so, until I saw you," he replied.