“I’m trying—I’m trying,” murmured Lord Farquhart, “to change that last song I wrote for Sylvia into a song for Barbara! The rhyme and the rhythm go the same, I think.” He stood up and sang the words out loud, repeating the verses several times, inserting sometimes Sylvia’s name and sometimes Barbara’s.
Lips that vie with the poppy’s hue,
Eyes that shame the violet’s blue,
Hearts that beat with love so true,
Sylvia, sweet, I come to you!
Barb’ra, sweet, I come to you!
His eyes questioned Treadway.
“Is it not quite the same? Does it not go to one name as well as to the other? To me it seems I’ve no need to write a new verse for my new love.”
“How will the fair Sylvia take her congé in a fortnight’s time?” demanded Ashley, in an undertone, of Lindley.
And it was in the same tone that Lindley answered: “Let’s wonder, rather, if the fair Sylvia’ll be given her congé in a fortnight’s time!” But the sneer in Lindley’s voice was for Ashley, who had asked the impertinent question, not for Farquhart, whose honor he, apparently, doubted. “Lord Farquhart’s not to blame, as you know well enough. The mess is of Lord Gordon’s making, for Lord Gordon holds in trust even the barren lands that came to Percy with his title.”
Ashley’s resentment of Lindley’s tone was apparent on his face, and his fingers were again on his sword. He was under no promise to his lady not to fight with Lindley, and his blood cried out for a fight with some one. But at that instant there was a loud clamor in the courtyard. A horse’s hoofs on the flags, a fretted whinny, the oaths of stable boys, all combined into an uproar.
“Can it be the Lady Barbara?” cried Percy Farquhart, sobered suddenly, and reaching for his plumed hat.
“Nay, my lord, ’tis but one horse,” answered Marmaduke, hurrying to the door. “’Tis a riderless horse,” he added, in a second.
“A riderless horse!” echoed all of the young men in chorus, springing to their feet.