He still wore his morning gown of purple velvet with great sleeves purflewed in gold; like all his house he was eminently a grand seigneur.
When his brother entered he rose and greeted him with real affection.
Although William had so early left his home for a new faith and more splendid fortunes, which had made him an intimate of an Emperor and placed him high above all his family in rank, his relations with his parents and his brothers and sisters had always remained warm and sincere. The recent death of his father had left him Count of Nassau and head of the Dillenburg branch of his house, and his brothers regarded him with augmented devotion and affection both as their hereditary chief and the most famous and brilliant wearer of their name.
"So early?" said Count John.
"I had news from Mechlin last night," said William, who had his agents everywhere. "Did you hear?"
"Nay," replied his brother. "How should I hear anything yesterday save jests and compliments? How is little Anne?"
William raised his brows and smiled; he moved to the sunny window, and seated himself in the red-cushioned embrasure. John, with a quick excuse, returned to finish his letter which was to his mother at Dillenburg, giving her an account of yesterday's ceremony.
The Prince looked out on to the market square; the long tension of his marriage negotiations being now over, he felt a kind of disappointment mingled with his relief, almost as if in his heart he doubted if this much-disputed match had been worth the immense pains he had taken to forward it. Hitherto his relations with women had always been pleasant; he had been first married, when he was seventeen, to Anne of Egmont, the wealthy heiress of the Van Burens. Her hand had not been sought by him, but had been in the nature of a magnificent gift from the favour of the Emperor. Anne, however, had been gentle, prudent, tender, and he had lived with her in contentment and peace; the other women whom he had known or courted since her death had all had some quality to attract or enthral. He was a knight who could choose among the finest by reason of his person as well as of his rank, and his taste had always led him to the gay, the magnificent, the loving. The few hours since he had met his bride yesterday had seemed to show him a specimen of womanhood with which he was unfamiliar; the fretful, deformed, passionate, and ignorant girl who was now his wife a little bewildered, a little troubled him. Already he had been stung by her tactless exhibition of the pride that could rate him her inferior, already he had winced a little at the unattractiveness her hysteric excitement and her over-sumptuous attire had emphasized.
Count John closed up and sealed his letter, then glanced at William, who still sat thoughtfully; the sun was over him from head to foot, and sparkled in the thick waves of his chestnut hair and in the bronze and gold threads of the dark-green damask doublet he wore.
"What news from Mechlin?" asked the younger brother.