So far the Princess Margaret had never once looked at the Sparhawk in his borrowed plumage, as he stood uneasily enough by the fireplace of the summer palace, leaning an elbow on the mantelshelf. But now she turned quickly to her guest.
"Oh, I love you!" she cried, running to Maurice and throwing her arms about her false sister-in-law in an impulsive little hug. "I think you are so brave. Is my hair sadly tangled? Tell me truly, Joan. The wind hath tumbled it about mine eyes. Not that it matters—with you!"
She said the last words with a little sigh.
Then the Princess Margaret tripped across the polished floor to a dressing-table which had been set out in the angle between the two windows. She turned the combs and brushes over with a contumelious hand.
"Where is your hand-glass?" she cried. "Do not tell me that you have never looked in it since you came to Courtland, or that you can put up with that squinting falsifier up there." She pointed to the oval-framed Venetian mirror which was hung opposite her. "It twists your face all awry, this way and that, like a monkey cracking a nut. 'Twas well enough for our good Conrad, but the Princess Joan is another matter."
"I have never even looked in either!" said the Sparhawk.
Some subtle difference in tone of voice caused the Princess to stop her work of patting into temporary docility her fair clustering ringlets, winding them about her fingers and rearranging to greater advantage the little golden combs which held her sadly rebellious tresses in place. She looked keenly at the Sparhawk, standing with both her shapely arms at the back of her head and holding a long ivory pin with a head of bright green malachite between her small white teeth.
"Your voice is hoarse—somehow you are different," she said, taking the pin from her lips and slipping it through the rebellious plaits with a swift vindictive motion.
"I have caught a cold riding into the city," quoth the Sparhawk hastily, blushing uneasily under her eyes. But for the time being his disguise was safe. Already Margaret of Courtland was thinking of something else.
"Tell me," she began, going to the window and gazing pensively out upon the green white-flecked pour of the Alla, swirling under the beams of the Summer Palace, "how many of your suite have followed you hither?"