Calling me back to her side, she bade me look out over the battlements, and tell her what I saw. And that which I had to inform her was that a mounted company was approaching through the plain.
For more than an hour we stood at gaze, seeking to discern who this might be. Howbeit, so slowly, and, as it seemed, so wearily, did the cavalcade come towards us, that at the end of that period it appeared hardly to have made a league. Yet, as we stood with our eyes forever strained upon the bright sunlight, and with I know not what wild speculations in our brains, I think I never saw our noble mistress with such a signal beauty in her mien.
None dared speak to her as the tardy minutes passed. At gaze upon the topmost pinnacle of the conning-tower, with her small and slender woman’s form tense as an arrow upon a bow, so that it seemed to poise itself midway between the green plain and the blue sky, all the ardour of her soul seemed to merge in her glance. It was as though her proud heart was overmounted in the yearning for victory.
It was from the lips of our mistress, and by the agency of her two thought-wingèd eyes, that the glad news proclaimed itself.
“’Tis he,” she said softly; “’tis him of England. It is Sirrah Red Dragon, the sweet giant, the valiant foreigner!”
As our mistress spoke these words, she placed her small white hand on my sleeve that was near to her, and it was like that of a small child that is fit only to grasp a toy. Yet when I felt the hot flame of passion that was burning in it, and its gentle trembling that was like the autumn willow, the hot blood of my youth surmounted me, and had I dared—and yet, reader, I must declare to you that I dared not—I would have paid half the course of nature to enfold this regal form to my breast.
I was waked from the trance of my desire by a profound sigh. It was of a melodious yet half mirthful bitterness. Without turning about I knew it to proceed from the Count of Nullepart. Yet, such was its delicacy that it lured me to turn my eyes to meet his own. And as they came together, we found within the gaze of one another the high yearning of our souls an hundred times reflected.
“Ah, my dear friend,” he lisped in the gentle and charming melody of his speech, which yet could not still the tumult of my soul, “have you forgot the Princess, she whom we serve yet see not, she whom we clasp yet cannot retain?”
“I curse that English robber!” I hissed in his ears. “I ask you, Sir Count, why does not the devil claim his own?”
“The better to plague an honest community, my dear friend,” said the Count of Nullepart, with a soft laugh. “Yet, on his part, this gigantic and monstrous Maximus Homo is a profligate, happy and careless son of the earth, who forever disdains the caresses that our Princess Fortune casts upon him. To her he is the prince who mocks her with the valiant insolency of his prodigal nature.”