Mistress Damaris Sedley sat upon the earth in a gown of rose-colored
silk. Across her knee, under her clasped hands, lay a light racket, for
she had strayed this way from battledore and shuttlecock and the
sprightly company of maids of honor and gentlemen pensioners engaged
thereat. She was a fair lady, of a clear pallor, with a red mouth very
subtly charming, and dark eyes beneath level brows. Her eyes had depths
on depths: to one player of battledore and shuttlecock they were merely
large brown orbs; another might find in them worlds below worlds; a
third, going deeper, might, Actæon-like, surprise the bare soul. A
curiously wrought net of gold caught her dark hair in its meshes, and
pearls were in her ears, and around the white column of her throat
rising between the ruff's gossamer walls. She fingered the racket, idly
listening the while for a foot-fall beyond her round of trees. Hearing
it at last, and taking it for her brother's, she looked up with a proud
and tender smile.

"Fie upon thee for a laggard, Henry!" she began: "I warrant thy Captain
meets not his Dione with so slow a step!" Then, seeing who stood before
her, she left her seat between the oak roots and curtsied low. "Sir
Mortimer Ferne," she said, and rising to her full height, met his eyes
with that deeper gaze of hers.

Ferne advanced, and bending his knee to the short turf, took and kissed
her hand. "Fair and sweet lady," he said, "I made suit to your brother,
and he has given me, his friend, this happy chance. Now I make my
supplication to you, to whom I would be that, and more. All this week
have I vainly sought for speech with you alone. But now these blessed
trees hem us round; there is none to spy or listen--and here is a mossy
bank, fit throne for a faery queen. Will you hear me speak?"