“That which one who is old, madam,” said the English giant in his softest voice, “and one who hath been accustomed all his years to grope for the light of the truth is fain to recommend to the grace of your ladyship, is the most excessive rigour known to mankind; a greater rigour which contains all the lesser rigours within itself; a rigour which poor unlucky manhood, be it that of prince or of peasant, is wont to regard with the same abhorrence as a sea-coal fire is regarded by a gib cat with a singed tail. The barbarous and excessive rigour to which your old honest servant refers, madam, is that which is profanely called holy matrimony. English Dickon humbly submits, madam, that you should receive John Castilian in the bonds of wedlock, and so visit the royal rascal according to his merit.”
Upon the enunciation of this project, which had only been possible to one of Sir Richard Pendragon’s surpassing boldness, the Count of Nullepart and myself had a lively fear that madam would drive her poinard into the heart of her over-presumptuous captain. For when he spoke in this wise her slender fingers trembled on the jewelled hilt of her dagger, and she cried out with flaming eyes,—
“Wed the spawn of darkness, sirrah! Wed the bloody-minded prince!”
“Even so, madam,” said the English giant, withdrawing a pace from her striking hand. “Under your gracious favour, that is the rigour that is humbly proposed by one who hath grown old in the love of virtue.”
As the Englishman spoke, a change was wrought in the demeanour of the Countess Sylvia. Like a very woman or a small child, or perchance like them both (for the worshipful Count of Nullepart assures me that they are one and the same), she peered into the eyes of her captain. And the manner of this action, which was one of a furtive modesty, seemed to imply that she dared hardly to look lest she should discover that which she feared to see.
“Wed the spawn of darkness!” she breathed softly. “I—I, Sirrah Red Dragon—I wed the froward prince!”
She continued to repeat these words in a low voice. Yet ever and anon she peered upwards to the red and hungry eyes of her great captain, that were full of a sombre and whimsical phantasy. And to the worshipful Count of Nullepart and to myself, who hung upon each phase of that which was toward, it seemed to us both, in the curious anguish of our hearts, that the lifeblood of the little Countess Sylvia ebbed away from her even as she gazed.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE LAST
I know not how long it was before the eyes of our mistress recoiled from that humorous front with which her great captain met the whole assembly. With her, I fear it must have been an age. Yet at last her gaze, that was now hapless, faltered altogether, and, like a proud-wingèd bird with its plumage torn, it fell to earth.
At the same instant this delectable form was shaken bitterly. And then our mistress looked up, and with eyes that shone no more like the Tagus, and with cheeks ashen white instead of the rosy carmine of a fair flower, she said with a most beautiful gentleness,—