On the face of a grassy terrace Florence reclined, with his head supported on his elbow, and so lost in thought that he did not hear her approach. In the hollow of his left hand lay the opal ring of Madeline; and it caught the keen eye of Lady Alison as she propped herself on her long cane and stooped over him. Startled by finding his deep and fond reverie so suddenly interrupted, Florence hastily placed the ring on one of his fingers, and resuming his volume of "Gologras and Gawaine," which lay near, arose with a flush of annoyance on his cheek. Rapid though the action, it was not done quickly enough to escape the keen eye of Dame Alison, and her sharp, angry, and anxious glance was at once riveted on the trinket. She saw that it was an opal; and the mysterious and malignant power which that stone was believed to possess and to exert over mortals at once occurred to her, and gave her maternal heart a twinge of alarm.
"Here is some new and fatal mystery!" she muttered; "dool and plague be on the hour I sent my only son to France! What bauble is this, Florence, that finds such favour in your sight?" she asked. And, as he expected the question, he replied calmly,—
"A trinket—only a trinket, mother; few gentlemen about the court are without such."
"My bairn," said she, seating herself by his side on the grassy slope of the terrace, and taking his hand in hers, while a fond smile spread over her face to conceal the anxious and searching glance of her grave grey eyes, "there was a time when a good sheaf of feathered arrows, a gay baldrick with pasements of gold, a crossbow with a stock inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, or a sword with a handsome guard, were toys that pleased you better, but that was before——"
"What, mother?"
"Before ye went to France, and to that devilish place Vendome? Ye have been sairly changed, my bairn, sinsyne, nor like the name ye inherit!"
"Dear mother," said he, kissing her hand with that combination of gallantry and affection which went out with the age of periwigs, "may I hope that I find more favour in your eyes to-day?"
"Favour, my winsome bairn!" she reiterated, while playing with his curly locks and the tassels of his ruff, and smiling fondly in spite of herself.
"Or am I still a lurdane and a maudlin fool?"
The old woman's brow darkened with an expression of care and trouble.