fairest there, and the gentleman was piqued because she looked not at
him, but at some fine Arachne web of her own weaving.

"Sweet Mistress Damaris--" he began; and again, "Fair Mistress
Damaris--" but Damaris was counting days and heard him not. A lesser
beauty left her work upon King David's crown to laugh aloud, with some
malice and some envy in her mirth. "Prithee, let her alone! She will
dream thus even in the presence. But I have a spell will make her
awaken." She leaned forward and called "_Dione_!" then with renewed
laughter sank back into her seat. "Lo! you now--"

The maid of honor, who at her own name stirred not, at the name of a
poet's giving had started from her dream with widened eyes and an
exquisite blush. The startled face which for one moment she showed her
laughing mates was of a beauty so intelligent and divine that, was it so
she looked, a many King Davids had found excuse for loving one
Bathsheba. Then the inner light which had so informed every feature
sought again its shrine, and Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a
nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest
French shrug the jest from her own shoulders to those of another: "Oh,
madam! was it you who spoke? Surely I thought it was your dead starling
that you taught to call you by that name--but whose neck you wrung when
it called it once too often!"

Having shot her forked shaft and come off victor, she smiled so sweetly
upon the gentleman pensioner that for such ample thanks he had been
reading still had she not risen, laid her work aside, and with a deep
and graceful courtesy to the merry group left the room. When she was
gone one sighed, and another laughed, and a third breathed, "O the
heavens! to love and be loved like that!"