“I am yours,” Rufus answered. He bowed over Brilliana’s fingers. “Farewell, lady.”
One and all they turned and left her, and as they tramped into the air the chorus of the Cavalier song came back to her happy ears.
“And we will sing, boys, God bless the King, boys,
Cast up your hats, and cry Vive le Roy.”
XIII
A GILDED CAGE
Evander awoke in a strange world steeped in lavender. It was long since he had lain so soft, long since he had drifted out of dreams to breathe lavender. His pleased senses, less alert for very ease and pleasure, denied him immediate knowledge of his whereabouts. He saw a fair room, well appointed; he welcomed the morning sunlight through delicate, unfamiliar curtains; he questioned the insisting deliciousness of lavender. Where was he? What was this chamber of calm panelled in pale oak? It was not Leyden, it was not Cambridge; then in a flash he knew. It was the west room at Harby—Harby where he lay a prisoner on parole, Harby which he had tried to take and which had ended by taking him. He leaped from his bed instantly, well awake, well alive, and gaining the window peeped through the parted curtains. He looked out across the moat on the terrace to the rear of Harby, beyond which lay the spacious gardens for which Harby was held famous. His men had held that terrace twenty-four hours earlier; now they had vanished as if they had never been, save for the testimony of the trampled grass. In their place a solitary figure sat on a baluster drinking smoke contemplatively from a pipe of clay. Evander knew him for Halfman—knew, too, that Halfman watched there for him, for the moment the curtains parted the sitter rose and, advancing towards the edge of the moat, waved and voiced salutation to Evander.
“Give you good-morning, gallant capitano,” he called. “Jocund day stands on the top of yon high eastern hill. Will it please your worthiness to be stirring?”
“Very willingly,” Evander called back. “Have I overslept?”