hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. Are you making
for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go with you. I've been
an exile and a wanderer--I've been to Roccadoro."

She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, as well
as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. The touch of
her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the sense of her
closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her hair,--these
things, you may be sure, went to his head, went to his heart. The garden
lay in a white blaze of sunshine, that seemed almost material, like an
incandescent fluid; but the entrance to the avenue was dark and
inviting. "Let us," he proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the
glossy leaves of the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play
that it's a thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen
Blanche, like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man."

"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took their places
on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high carved back,
(carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of course it was
lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and scarlet.

"_White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
Fairer and dearer than dearest and fairest,
To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,--
Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an thou darest_,"

trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, improvised
for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he laughed, "that
song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had best choose
another."