Then the door opened, and the footman announced "Milor Trent," and for some reason the midsummer sun seemed to dazzle my eyes, and I saw a figure spring—that is the word, "spring"—from a deep fauteuil, and I felt two slim hands in mine, and I heard a well-remembered voice say, "So you have come, my lord."
"Yes, I have come, your Highness. You knew very well that I should come. Yet, yet," for, somehow, I at once began to grow bold, "there was no word of 'Highness' nor of 'lord' in the old days. Then you were 'a girl called Damaris,' and——"
"And," she interrupted, with a soft laugh, "you were an impudent young soldier called Blue Eyes. But now we are old, staid people. I am twenty-four."
"And I am twenty-five," I interrupted in my turn.
"Wherefore we have grown sober and steady. Still, notwithstanding that, you may tell me if you choose whether you think I have aged very much."
Aged very much! Yes, she had aged, if being more beautiful than ever meant having aged. For now the sun dazzled me no longer, and I could see all her loveliness, I could observe that the tall, slim form had grown a little, just a little, more womanly; that the soft dark eyes had just a little more of calmness in their gaze; that the scarlet lips were as full, and the small white teeth, which I had always admired so much, as brilliant.
"But all the same," she said, while I surveyed her, "you need not hold my hand so long. One does not look at another with their fingers."
Then, when I had released that hand, which, I protest, I did not know I was holding, she bade me sit down by her side, she herself taking a seat upon a great Segovian ottoman close by, and drawing up to her a little ebony table upon which was a little gilt coach, with the doors and windows of glass, and with four little silver horses to it, and a coachman and footman in gold. And she opened one of the doors of this little coach and popped her long slim fingers in and drew out a bonbon, and, I thought, was going to pop it in my mouth too. But, if that had been her intention, she considered better of it, perhaps because she was now "sober and steady," and so, instead, laid it gravely down on the ebony table, and pointed to it, and said, "Eat it;" which I did.
"Now," she said, "we will drink something, à la bonne chance. I drink chocolate; but since you are a great big mousquetaire you may have some wine if you choose. Let me see; there is Florence wine, and Lunel and Muscadine, and——"
"I shall drink the chocolate or nothing," I said firmly, since I was not going to sit toping like a rude mousquetaire before my Princess while she drank the other. Whereon she told me to ring the bell and order the chocolate, and in ten minutes we were discussing that beverage, and the footman had left us alone.