"Since I have not chosen him—and there are three!" Margherita interposed faintly—"but if it is of your Majesty's command——?"
"Tell me but this one thing—dost love him, Margherita?"
"If there must be confession, should not the high-priest of this sacrament be first to hear it?" the proud maid whispered, as she knelt and kissed her Lady's hand with a sudden grace: but the Queen knew that she might neither tease nor trifle more.
"My Margherita," she said, folding her closely; "I could dream no sweeter dream than to know my two very dearest ones worthy of each other and happy together."
So it was not long before the Court of Nikosia was gladdened with a festival of old-time splendor, lasting for many days—with tournaments of knights and jousts of song, and recitals of quaint Cyprian legends and classic story, and all that their most punctilious custom might decree for a noble's marriage feast in the days of the cinque cento.
But as time slipped by in apparent tranquillity and growing prosperity, with constant evidences of judicious thought bestowed by the Queen upon the well-being of her subjects—with the coming and going of artists and men of letters to her court, and the resuming of all those ancient Cyprian customs that might minister to the content of the nobles—whom it was ever most needful to satisfy with a sufficient show of gaiety—there had nevertheless been an imperceptibly increasing tightening of the threads of government which stretched far across the waters to Venice's own blue Adriatic, into the very Council-Chambers of the Palazzo San Marco.
Even the moneys of Cyprus were flowing somewhat overfreely into the coffers of the Venetian Provveditori who kept vigilant watch over the island kingdom—which was, in truth, no longer anything but a Venetian province, except in name. Yet Caterina, while she chafed at many hampering restrictions which she was powerless to overcome, loved her people and her work with the strength of desperation, and struggled bravely on.
It was a relief that the petty warfare of conflicting claimants without and within her kingdom had ceased; even the importunity from aspiring suitors came no more—since the same cold answer was ever ready for all, alike: and to Caterina this also was a relief. For, although of her own will she could have given but one reply, she had bitterly resented the imperative command of the Signoria forbidding her second marriage, as an indignity assuring her that she was not free—and each fresh importunity was a reminder of her bondage.
If the Cyprian members of the Council of the Realm also saw that the meshes of Venice were steadily gathering more closely about them, they had no longer power of resistance against that craftiness of the Republic which had known how to divert the moneys that should have gone to the making of a Cyprian Marine, while tickling their love of splendor with some outward show—yet had kept the island kingdom from appreciating this great need, by the readiness with which full-manned Venetian galleys protected the Cyprian coasts whenever they were threatened with devastation.