... And then they had sent Johnnie away, marvelling at the goodness, shrewdness, and knowledge of the Alderman, with his whole being one sob of love, pity, and protection for his dear simple mourner—so crystal clear, so sisterlike and sweet!
It was time to go upon duty.
Johnnie looked at his thick oval watch—a "Nuremberg Egg," as it was called in those days—cut short his reverie of sweet remembrance, and went straight to the King Consort's wing of the Palace.
When he was come into the King's room he found him alone with Torromé, his valet, sitting in a big leather-covered arm-chair, his ruff and doublet taken off, and wearing a long dressing-gown of brown stuff, a friar's gown it almost seemed.
The melancholy yellow face brightened somewhat as the Esquire came in.
"I am home again, Señor," he said in Spanish, though "en casa" was the word he used for home, and that had a certain pathos in it. "There is a torneo, a justa, after dinner, so they tell me. I had wished to ride myself, but I am weary from our viajero into the country. I shall sit with the Queen, and you, Señor, will attend me."
He must have seen a slight, fleeting look of disappointment upon Commendone's face.
Himself, as the envoy Suriano said of him in 1548, "deficient in that energy which becometh a man, sluggish in body and timid in martial enterprise," he nevertheless affected an exaggerated interest in manly sports. He had, it is true, mingled in some tournaments at Brussels in the past, and Calvera says that he broke his lances, "very much to the satisfaction of his father and aunts." But in England, at any rate, he had done nothing of the sort, and his voice to Commendone was almost apologetic.
"We will break a lance together some day," he said, "but you must forego the lists this afternoon."