She drew a little pace away from him, fearing to utter her thought until she had seen his face.
"Doth it become one so to speak the message of his King, with visor down, Sir Knight, to the bride whom his Majesty would honor?" she answered half-playfully—yet a little bashful in her first speech in the Grecian tongue which she had striven to make her own.
"Our Sovereign Lady doth answer right royally," he said, as he bowed his acquiescence in her command, passing his helmet to one of the knights who came thronging behind him, and stood confronting her—very courteous and deferent in his bearing, though the breeze was tossing his waving hair about his throat with a hint of comradery, and there was a world of love and mastery in his charming face.
Her own—very fair and true and radiant with girlish beauty—flushed, then paled again, with the quickened beating of her heart, and her eyes, eloquent in confession, were fixed on his, which deepened to a glow of pride and pleasure; yet he was loth to make an end of her charming confusion.
"Hath this missive from his Majesty no meaning for his bride of Venice?" he asked, coming nearer.
"Janus!" she cried—all her soul shining in her eyes; and then, in her own soft, Italian tongue:
"How should my heart not know thee!"