had sent me such a sister! Do you go to Leicester House, Mortimer? If
not, my fair Discretion hath a mate--"

"I," answered Ferne, "am also for Greenwich."

Arden laughed again. "Her Grace gives you yet another audience? Or is it
that hath come to court that Nonpareil, that radiant Incognita, that
be-rhymed Dione at whose real name you keep us guessing? I thought the
violet satin was not for naught!"

"In that you speak with truth," said the other, coolly, "for thirty
acres of good Devon land went to its procuring. Since you are for the
court, Henry Sedley, one wherry may carry the two of us."

When the two adventurers and the boy in blue and silver had made half
the distance to the pleasant palace where, like a flight of multicolored
birds, had settled for the moment Elizabeth's migratory court, the
gentlemen became taciturn and fell at length to silent musing, each upon
his own affairs. The boy liked it not, for their discourse had been of
armor and devices, of war-horses and Spanish swords, and such knightly
matters as pleased him to the marrow. He himself (Robin-a-dale they
called him) meant to be altogether such a one as his master in violet
satin. Not a sea-dog simply and terrible fighter like Captain Manwood or
Ambrose Wynch, nor a ruffler like Baldry, nor even a high, cold
gentleman like Sir John, who slew Spaniards for the good of God and the
Queen, and whose slow words when he was displeased cut like a rope's
end. But he would fight and he would sing; he would laugh with his foe
and then courteously kill him; he would know how to enter the presence,
how to make a great Queen smile and sigh; and then again, amid the
thunder and reek of the fight, on decks slippery with blood, he would