“Coming, Your Majesty,” answered the Admiral, hopping off. They were very great friends, the Queen and the Admiral, and mingled playfulness with the most solemn and important business. Very likely Her Majesty had diplomatic reasons. It is quite easy to give the numbers of an army to a man who is playing ball with you, or trying to take off a pulcinello.
Donna Rusidda turned round to Will, who was still very grim and hurt, and looked as though he would give his whole prospects to hide himself in the little Saracen building which the Queen had erected as a kind of summer-house, and which was the last piece of shelter before the Palace, that rose with the splendour and solitariness of a temple half a mile away.
“Oh W-Will,” she said, returning with great relief to Italian, “I am sorry. Go in there, and I will tell you what I will do for you.”
The house stood in a little thicket of laurels, from which only its flat terraced roof and turret were visible at the Palace.
He did not move.
“Come, W-Will,” she said kindly. “There is no one here to see you, and it is very comfortable. You can quite well stay here until I have a change sent to you. I do not love the Ambassador’s wife, but she is generous-hearted, and if I tell her what I have done, and how sorry I am, I know she will see that you get your change without any one knowing it, except your servant.”
He was a little mollified, but stood irresolute. She laid her hand on his arm to draw him in; her touch thrilled him, and he could resist no longer, especially when, with a sudden impulse, she bent low and kissed his hand, saying: “I have a confession to make—will you forgive me?”
“Of course I will: how can I help it?” he replied, but still with a touch of something—anger or hurt—in his voice.
“Do not speak till you have heard,” she said anxiously, and not far from weeping.
“Oh! but I cannot help forgiving you anything.”