“Ah, madam, madam,” I cried hoarsely, “is it so with you? Is it indeed so? Yet how can this be? You are a great lady, and I?— God help me! what am I?”
A wondrously tender light shone in her eyes. The colour deepened in her face with her sweet yielding shame.
“You are the keeper of my heart,” she whispered in reply; “my lover—and my king!” I caught her hands in mine and raised them to my lips.
“Listen,” she continued softly, ere I could find words to speak. “I was proud and cold to you, dear love, against my own heart’s teaching. I am proud still! Prouder in your love than ever I was before! I would rather share your exile than be the richest lady in the land! In fortune or distress, in poverty or prison—so that I am with you, sir, I care not what befalls!” And at those words of sweet surrender I hesitated no longer, but took her in my arms, and in a long, long kiss of betrothal her lips met mine.
“See!” she whispered a moment later, gently disengaging herself and pointing to the window, where a grey light was stealing into the room. “It is the dawn—the dawn of hope—and happiness!”
I glanced once at the fair landscape, already lightening with the coming day, then my eyes again sought the face of the lovely woman at my side.
“And of love,” I answered in reply. “Ah God! my love! my queen!”
And so it befell that when, eighteen hours later, from the deck of the Good Adventure, I watched the shores of England recede into the purple mists of evening, my lady sat beside me, her hand in mine. A soft breeze played in the cordage overhead, from away forward came ever and anon a snatch of song. The crimson light faded slowly from the sky—faded—grew fainter—died! The soft summer night enwrapped us round.
“Sweetheart,” I said tenderly, bending towards her, gazing too to where her eyes were fixed upon the distant lights in the home she had renounced, “you will not regret? You will always so love me in the years to come?”