It was a page thrusting aside the arras that broke the spell. Opening his mouth to make a flourishing announcement, the words were checked on his tongue by four white hands motioning stern commands for silence.
“It is the King’s Marshal,” he framed with protesting lips. But even that failed to gain him admittance.
Rising, flushed and smiling, the girl with the blue lilies in her hair tiptoed toward him. “I have orders to receive the Marshal,” she whispered. “Where is he?”
“He is in the Old Room,” the page answered rather resentfully, but resigned himself as he remembered that, however this curtailed his importance, it left open a prompter return to his game of leap-frog along the passage.
In all probability his nimble departure saved him from a scolding for, as she tripped after him down the corridor, a little frown was forming between Randalin’s brows. “I think it is not well-mannered of the fellow to say ‘the King’s Marshal’ as though my lord were Canute’s thane,” she was reflecting, “and I shall put an end to it. Whatever others say, one never needs to tell me that Sebert is not suffering in his service.”
With this thought in her mind, she raised the moth-eaten tapestry and stood looking at him with a face full of generous indignation. Except for the noble’s embroidered belt and gold-hilted sword, his dress now differed in no way from that of the hundreds and hundreds of red-cloaked guards who were spread over the country like sparks after a conflagration. As he turned at the end of the beat he was pacing and came slowly toward her, she could see that in its gravity his face was as soldier-like as his clothes. Always she found it so when she came upon him unawares; and always, when she spoke to him—She held her breath as his eyes rose to her, and let it go with a little sigh of happiness as she saw gloom drop from him like a mask at the sight of her.
“Randalin!” he cried joyously, and made a step toward her, then stopped to laugh in gay wonder. “Now no poet would call you ‘a weaver of peace’ as you stand there, for you look rather like an elf of battle. What is it, my raven?”
Her lips smiled back at him, but a mist was over her eyes. “It is your King that I am angry with, lord. He is not worthy that a man like you should serve him.”
Moving toward her again, he held himself a little straighter. “I serve not the King, dear heart,” he said gently, “but the State of England, in whose service the highest is none too good to bend.”
She yielded him her hands but not her point. “That does not change the fact that it is his overbearingness which makes your path as though you trod on nettles,—for certainly I know it is so, though you will not say it!”