The lady of Shalott.
—Tennyson.
Lady Edith tried to banish the memory of her eventful day in the gayety and splendor of the masquerade ball she attended that night. In vain, for, strangely enough, it seemed to her excited fancy, she had not been in the rooms more than an hour before a black domino in the costume of a minstrel of the Fifteenth Century approached her and begged for the honor of a promenade with the “beauteous Mary.”
Lady Edith, in the superb costume of the lovely Mary, Queen of Scots, and looking magnificently grand, bowed with queenly dignity, and placing her white-gloved hand on the minstrel’s arm, moved on with him among the throng of revelers.
Who was he, she wondered. His face was so shrouded in his mask that she could not guess his identity, and his voice sounded unfamiliar. Yet, as she leaned upon his arm a sweet sense of restfulness and peace crept over her such as she had never known before, and a quick thought of Guy Winthrop thrilled her, only to be dispelled with a shuddering sigh at the memory of Nurse Katherine’s warning.
“You tremble,” murmured her stately companion, in deep musical tones. “What earthly emotion can have power to disturb the serenity of a crowned forehead?”
“A woman’s heart is the same, whether born to the russet or the purple,” she answered lowly, and almost, it seemed to her, without volition of her own.
“I should like to believe it,” the minstrel answered, simply.
The queen asked lightly:
“Have any of my fair subjects given you cause to doubt my assertion? If so, you have but to speak—and I punish!”