“I hope it is so,” she said gently, “for it needs much forgiveness what I am about to tell you. I did it because you are so handsome—such a grand seigneur: I could not bear to think that that little homely-looking man with his plainly-fitting clothes, the greatest man in all the world, should look nothing—one of the people—if it were not for the leadership written in his face, beside one of his officers—a mere boy. Yes, you are a mere boy, W-Will, or I would not have done it to you; and I did it to make him laugh at you, and to humiliate you before him, that he might be exalted in my imagination and look like a conqueror. Now strike me or kill me: I have told you the whole truth.”
“Rusidda,” said Will, addressing her thus for the first time, and taking her hands to hold her, while he looked into her burning face as if he were going to see through into her soul, “you have hurt me on my tenderest point; but I have forgiven you, because no one saw it but yourself and my Admiral, and him I so worship and reverence that I would go through not only death but humiliation for his sake. And you I love.”
Her great grey Sicilian eyes, which could look black or blue in certain lights, and which had been fixed nervously on his, fell before his gaze, and he thought that she was won. She let him kiss her without resisting, and it was a good many seconds before she could find words to stem the impetuous torrent of love in which he half besought her, half claimed her for his wife after all. At last she managed to say:
“W-Will—yes, I can call you dear W-Will—I can never marry you.”
“Why?” he broke in: “you cannot have become betrothed to another, or you would not have spoken as you have about friendship. I know how strict is the etiquette of your Sicilian betrothals.”
“Oh no, I am not betrothed,” she sighed, “nor ever can be.”
“You are not under a monastic vow?” he asked. He knew nothing of such vows, but felt that now, when all Europe was a battle-field, the sword might find a way to cut many knots.
“None of my family have ever taken the vow,” she said proudly; “it has been part of the code handed down from our Norman ancestor, who won his principality by bearding the Pope. If we had had a few cardinals in the family, we should not have been as poor as we are now.”
“Poor?” he said, the word arresting him. “I shall not always be poor in these fighting days. Each of our captains will have a thousand pounds out of the three prizes we burnt at the Nile, not to mention the prizes we saved; and even I shall have——”
“Oh no,” she said sadly, “I was not thinking of that. I would marry you if I could love you, W-Will, if you had not a carlin but your pay, and had to live when you were on shore in the tower, which is about all of the Favara we inhabit. You would have to live on oranges and polenta and Indian figs, and perhaps we could buy a little macaroni sometimes,” she added, forcing a smile. “We are so poor, we two, the last of the House of Favara, that we have to let our domain to a farmer for orange and lemon growing, and let him use part of our palace for his business. We could not live if we were not in the household of the Queen. It is not poverty that prevents.”