“He hath the ill look of such an one,” she answered, and then said below her breath, bitterly: “She hath a son—and I am but a barren stock.”
Rising, she added, hurriedly, “We will speak to the people at the May Day sports to-morrow. Let there be great feasting.”
She motioned to Sir Andrew Melvill to come forward, and with a gesture of welcome and a promise of speech with him on the morrow she dismissed them.
Since the two strangers had entered, Angèle’s eyes had been fastened on the gentleman who accompanied Sir Andrew Melvill. Her first glance at him had sent a chill through her, and she remained confused and disturbed. In vain her memory strove to find where the man was set in her past. The time, the place, the event eluded her, but a sense of foreboding possessed her; and her eyes followed him with strained anxiety as he retired from the presence.
[XIII]
AS had been arranged when Lemprière challenged Leicester, they met soon after dawn among the trees beside the Thames. A gentleman of the court, to whom the Duke’s Daughter had previously presented Lemprière, gayly agreed to act as second, and gallantly attended the Lord of Rozel in his adventurous enterprise. There were few at court who had not some grudge against Leicester, few who would not willingly have done duty at such a time; for Leicester’s friends were of fair-weather sort, ready to defend him, to support him, not for friendship, but for the crumbs that dropped from the table of his power. The favorite himself was attended by the Earl of Ealing, a youngster who had his spurs to win, who thought it policy to serve the great time-server. Two others also came.
It was a morning little made for deeds of rancor or of blood. As they passed, the early morning mists above the green fields of Kent and Essex were being melted by the summer sun. The smell of ripening fruit came on them with pungent sweetness, their feet crashed odorously through clumps of tigerlilies, and the dew on the ribbon-grass shook glistening drops upon their velvets. Overhead the carolling of the thrush came swimming recklessly through the trees, and far over in the fields the ploughmen started upon the heavy courses of their labor; while here and there a poacher with bow and arrow slid through the green undergrowth, like spies hovering on an army’s flank.