"A rich prize indeed," he chuckled. "The cousin of the Bearnais—a candidate of the League for the crown of France. Ho, ho! Serving on the galleys as a Huguenot! You were right. There is no good fuel for Father Teruel's bonfires—he is meat for the masters of Tullio the Neapolitan and Serra his kinsman. Was there ever such sport? You do indeed deserve a province and a dower, were it not that you are too valuable where you are, aiding the Cause—and me, your poor loving 'uncle'! But what made me laugh as I listened, till the tears came into my old eyes, was to hear you—you, to whom a thousand men had paid court—begging for the love of that starved and terrified young braggart in his suit of silken bravery, tashed with prisons, and the fear of the Place of Eyes still white on his face!"
Then all unexpectedly Valentine la Niña spoke. Her tall figure seemed to overshadow that of her little, dimpling, winking kinsman, as the pouches under his eyes shook with merriment, while his mouth was one wreathed smile, and he pointed his beautiful, plump, white fingers together pyramidally, as if measuring one hand against the other.
"It was true," she said point-blank, "I was not pretending. I did love him—and I do!"
The dimples died out one by one on the face of the historian, Mariana of Toledo. The ripe colour faded from the cheek-bone. He glanced nervously over his shoulder with the air of a man who may be sheltering traitors under his roof-tree.
"Hush!" he whispered. "Enough—now you have carried the jest far enough. It was excellent with the springald D'Albret. You played him well, like a trout on an angle. But after all we are—where we are. And Teruel and Tullio are not the men to appreciate such a jest."
"I was never farther from jesting in my life," said Valentine la Niña; "I love him as I never thought to love man before. If he would have loved me, and forgotten that—that woman—I would have done for him all I said—aye, and more!"
"You—Valentine—a king's daughter?"
"Great good that has done me," cried the girl; "I must not show my face. My father (if, indeed, he is my father) would so gladly get rid of me that he would present me to the Grand Turk if he thought the secret would hold water. As it is, he keeps me doing hateful work, lying and smiling, smiling and lying, like—like a Jesuit!"
"Girl, you have taken leave of your senses—of your judgment!" said her "uncle" severely. "Do you not see that you are sealing the doom of the man for whom you profess a feeling as foolish as sudden?"
"Neither foolish nor sudden," retorted the girl sullenly, her hand on the back of a chair, gripping the top bar like a weapon. For a moment the little soft man with his eternal smile might have been her victim. She could have brained him with a blow—the angle of that solid oaken seat crashing down upon the shining bald head which harboured so many secrets and had worked out so many plots. Valentine la Niña let the moment pass, but while it lasted she might very well have done it.