After this the buzz of conversation, the rustle of ladies’ dresses, the strains of the Queen’s musicians, seemed to strike wearily on her ear; how pointless seemed the jests that yet provoked bursts of laughter from the bystanders; how uninteresting the vapid compliments that were yet paid with such an air, and received so graciously; how dull and uninteresting the whole routine of a courtier’s life, and the individual items that composed a courtly assemblage! As we must all do sooner or later, for the moment the girl saw life without the varnish, and wondered it had ever looked so bright; she longed for the hour of dismissal, when she, too, had a tryst to keep, a duty to perform. In the meantime we must follow Maxwell into the Abbey garden.
CHAPTER XXVII.
‘The foremost was an aged knight,
He wore the gray hair on his chin,
Says, “Yield to me thy lady bright
An’ thou shalt walk the woods within.”
‘“For me to yield my lady bright
To such an aged knight as thee,