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“O heavens!” spoke the possessor of the contralto, “I would have thought you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, Jack.” Considering for a moment, she added, “You may come, too, if you like.”

But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. “I would not annoy you for an emperor’s ransom. Go in peace, my child.”

Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women “a bean pole.” There was about her a great deal of the child and something of the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of buying something for her.

Now Marian considered her betrothed, and seemed to come at last to a conclusion that skirted platitude. “Jack, two people can be fond of each other without wanting to be together all the time. And I really am fond of you, Jack.”

“I would be a fool if I questioned the first statement,” rejoined the Duke; “and if I questioned the second, very miserable. Nevertheless, you go in pursuit of strange gods, and I decline to follow.”

Her eyebrows interrogated him.

“You are going,” the Duke continued, “in pursuit of gods beside whom I esteem Zidonian Ashtoreth, and Chemosh, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites, to be commendable objects of worship. You will pardon my pedantic display of learning, for my feelings are strong. You are going to sit in the woods. You will probably sit under a youngish tree, and its branches will sway almost to the ground and make a green, sun-steeped tent about you, as though you sat at the heart of an emerald. You will hear the kindly wood-gods go steathily about the forest, and you will know that they are watching you, but you will never see them. From behind every tree-bole they will watch you; you feel it, but you never, never quite see them. Presently the sweet, warm odors of the place and its perpetual whispering and the illimitably idiotic boasting of the birds,–that any living creature should be proud of having constructed one of their nasty little nests is a reflection to baffle understanding,–this hodge-podge of sensations, I say, will intoxicate you. Yes, it will thoroughly intoxicate you, Marian, and you sit there quite still, in a sort of stupor, drugged into the inebriate’s magnanimity, firmly believing that the remainder of your life will be throughout of finer texture,–earth-spurning, free from all pettiness, and at worst vexed only by the noblest sorrows. Bah!” cried the Duke; “I have no patience with such nonsense! You will believe it to the tiniest syllable, that wonderful lying message which April whispers to every living creature that is young,–then you will return to me, a slim, star-eyed Mænad, and will see that I am wrinkled. But do you go your ways, none the less, for April is waiting for you yonder,–beautiful, mendacious, splendid April. And I? Faith, April has no message for me, my dear.”