"By the cross on my dagger, I swear to you, madam——"
"But your dagger is lost."
"I regret that deeply, for it was the present of a noble dame."
"Since we are so bent on fruitlessly questioning each other, may I ask her name?" said the younger lady.
"Diana de Poictiers, the Duchess of Valentinois; it bears her three crescents engraved upon the hilt; but I left it in some knave's body on the night of the brawl. If he lives, the diamonds in the pommel may perhaps prove a salve for his sores; if he dies, a fund for his funeral—but a pest on't! my brave dagger is gone."
"Accept this from me," said the taller lady, taking from an ebony buffet that stood near, a jewelled poniard, and presenting it to Florence.
"A thousand thanks, madam—a lady's gift can never be declined; but what do I see? The cipher of James V.—of his late majesty."
"'Twas his dagger," said the lady gloomily, "and with it he threatened to stab Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, the inquisitor-general of Scotland; but I arrested his hand and took away the weapon; for the gentle King James would never refuse aught to a woman, a priest, or a child."
"And so you were known to the fair mistress of Francis I.?" asked the young lady with a slightly disdainful pout on her pretty lip.
"Nay, madam, I cannot say that she knew me; but once when she and her royal lover quarrelled, I bore a letter from her to Francis, and at a time when no other person would venture to approach him, his majesty being furious on the arrival of tidings that his fleet before Nice had been destroyed by the galleys of Andrew Doria."