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This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by his more stolid side, the girl’s heart raged at memory of the decade so newly overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or that ungracious patron–on any one who would take charge of her while the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England. Slights enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and hunger even. But now at last she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always done, and later still she and Etienne would be very happy; and, in fine, to-morrow was to be a new day.

So these two rode ever southward, and always Prince Edward found this new page of his–this Miguel de Rueda–a jolly lad, who whistled and sang inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill.

Sang Miguel de Rueda:

“Lord Love, that leads me day by day
Through many a screened and scented way,
Finds to assuage my thirst
No love that may the old love slay,
None sweeter than the first.

“Ah, heart of mine, that beats so fast
As this or that fair maid trips past,
Once and with lesser stir
We spied the heart’s-desire, at last,
And turned, and followed her.

“For Love had come that in the spring
When all things woke to blossoming
Was as a child that came
Laughing, and filled with wondering,
Nor knowing his own name–“

“And still I would prefer to think,” the big man interrupted, heavily, “that Sicily is not the only allure. I would prefer to think my wife so beautiful– And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary.”

The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a decade.

For the Prince had quickly fathomed the meaning of the scheme hatched in Castile. “When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de Gatinais. He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this neat affair. And in reason England must support my uncle against El Sabio. Why, my lad, I ride southward to prevent a war that would convulse half Europe.”

“You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole chance of happiness,” Miguel de Rueda estimated.

“That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do not question my wife does. Yet is our happiness here a trivial matter, whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen–as I have done, my little Miguel–a man viewing his death-wound with a face of stupid wonder?–a man about to die in his lord’s quarrel and understanding never a word of it? Or a woman, say–a woman’s twisted and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of some village? or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush this body? Well, it is to prevent a many such spectacles hereabout that I ride southward.”

Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, “She has her right to happiness,” the page stubbornly said.

“Not so,” the Prince retorted; “since it hath pleased the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to intrust to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. And therefore the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more an inconsiderable matter. For as I have read in the Annals of the Romans–” He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter, whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. “My little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for protection to five soldiers–that is, to the five senses–to preserve it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this world–“