Katharine Fargo had dropped her lorgnette with an exclamation. She stood up, her wide eyes fixed on that figure in pure white, with the blood-red cordon flaunting across his horse’s flanks and the single crimson blossom glowing in his hat.
“The White Knight!” she breathed. “Who is he?”
Judge Chalmers looked round in sudden illumination. “I forgot that you would be likely to know him,” he said. “That is Mr. John Valiant of Damory Court.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE KNIGHT OF THE CRIMSON ROSE
The row of horsemen had halted in a curving line before the grand stand, and now in the silence the herald, holding a parchment scroll, spurred before each rider in turn, demanding his title. As this was given he whirled to proclaim it, accompanying each evolution with a blast on his horn. “Knight of the Golden Spur,” “Knight of Castlewood,” “Lord of Brandon,” “Westover’s Knight,” “Knight of the Silver Cross”: the names, fanciful, or those of family estates, fell on John Valiant’s ear with a pungent flavor of medievalism. His eyes, full of the swaying crowd, the shift and shimmer of light and color, returned again and again to an alluring spot of blue at one side, which might for him have been the heart of the whole festal out-of-doors. He started as he became aware that the rider next him had answered and that the herald had paused before him.
“Knight of the Crimson Rose!” It sprang to his lips without forethought, an echo, perhaps, of the improvised sash and the flower in his hat-band, but the shout of the herald and the trumpet’s blare seemed to make the words fairly bulge with inevitability. And through this struck a sudden appalled feeling that he had really spoken Shirley’s name, and that every one had heard. He could not see her face, and clutched his lance fiercely to overcome an insane desire to stoop hideously in his saddle and peer under the shading hat-brim. Lest he should do this, he fastened his eyes determinedly on the major, who now proceeded to deliver himself of the “Charge to the Knights.”