"Indeed! Then there is some hope for you, if you've kept track of time," she returned pointedly.
Still he forbore to qualify his manner, save with a latent smile that further exasperated the girl.
"What mean you, gentle mistress?" he asked quietly, without even looking at her.
"'Sweet Jacqueline!' 'Gentle mistress!' you are profuse with soft words!" she cried sharply.
"And yet they turn you not from anger."
"Anger!" she said, her eyes flashing. "Not another man at court would dare to talk to me as you do."
At this he lifted his brows and surveyed her much as one would a spoiled child, a glance that excited in her the same emotion she had experienced the night of his arrival in Fools' hall, when he had contemplated her in her garb of Joculatrix, as some misplaced anomaly.
"I know, mistress," he returned ironically, "you have a reputation for sorcery. But I think it lies more in your eyes than in the moon."
"And yet I can see the future for all that," she replied, persistently, defiantly.
"The future?" he retorted, and looked from the earth to the sky. "What is the goal of yonder tiny cloud? Can you tell me that?"