"She received me sweetly," he said, "avowed 'twas hard for a daughter to part from her father, but I must do my duty; said she had confidence in the courtesy of English gentlemen and knew we should treat her father well; assured me that you should have all good care and tendance, and thanked Heaven that Master Rudd had so true a friend. Then she smiled bewitchingly upon me, gave me her hand, and looked as though the greatest pleasure in life I could do her was to turn my back and hie me away. What will the Queen say, Chris?"
He laughed heartily at my bewilderment upon this question, then sighed again, shook my hand mournfully, and so departed.
It needs not to tell of those few weeks I spent in sickness on my couch, yet weeks of bliss and unimaginable contentment. My lady spent the greater part of every day with me, bringing me confections made by her own fair hands, smoothing my pillow, tending me with kind ministrations, reading to me prettily out of her books, and hanging upon my lips when I related, as she bade me, somewhat of my adventures. One day, when reading out of Master Spenser's book, she faltered at those lines—
"Where they do feed on Nectar heavenly-wise,
With Hercules and Hebe and the rest,"
and with a pretty blush she listened as I told her those enchanting fables of the antique world.
"And I was jealous of Hebe!" she said.
"'That canker-worm, that monster, Jealousy!'" I quoted from the same poem. "But why jealous of Hebe, mistress?" I asked.
"Because I was a witless, silly child," she said. "Jealous of a goddess, indeed! But I knew not then she was a goddess."
"You thought she was a maiden like yourself?" I said.
"Not like myself," she said, "but fairer."