"Will you ride with me, Monseigneur?"
A knot of early daffodils was tucked in her girdle, the spring breeze fluttered a bright strand of crinkled bronze against her brighter cheek; all the youth of the year was in the happy face she lifted to him. Stanief paused with his foot on the step to look at her, many thoughts meeting in his drowsily-brilliant eyes.
"Thank you," he answered. "I wonder if you will ever come for me again, Iría, after I have finished here indeed."
An innocent surprise and pleasure dawned in her expression.
"I will come every day, if you like, monseigneur," she offered. "I did not know you cared."
He took the seat beside her, with a courteous salute to Marya.
"You are gracious, as always. I did not mean exactly that, although you can not guess how pleasant it was to find you here to-day. Live your pretty routine and fancies, Duchess of Dreams, and give me the alms of time you can not use."
They spoke in Iría's soft native tongue, which the Countess Marya did not understand and which Stanief had learned long before in some of the Nadeja's nomadic voyages. Always gentle to the gentle Iría, to-day his voice carried an added tenderness which stirred her to vague unrest and wistfulness.
"You do not mean that," she said, troubled. "How should I have any time that is not yours, monseigneur? And my fancies—you can not know how many of them are wishes that I might prove a little, only a little, of all your kindness makes me feel. I wish, how much I wish, that I could do something for you!"