should be so; but I was almost mad when I first heard this rumour,
knowing my duty would not loose me to come to you at once--and knowing
you so well, that only if your heart had melted to the one who besought
you, you would give up."

"I--give up," she answered; "I give up."

"I worship you," he said; "I worship you." And their meeting eyes were
drowned in each other's tenderness.

They galloped side by side, and the watchers looked on, exchanging words
and glances, seeing in her beauteous, glowing face, in his joyous one,
the final answer to the question they had so often asked each other.
'Twas his Grace of Osmonde who was the happy man, he and no other. That
was a thing plain indeed to be seen, for they were too high above the
common world to feel that they must play the paltry part of outward
trifling to deceive it; and as the sun pierces through clouds and is
stronger than they, so their love shone like the light of day itself
through poor conventions. They did not know the people gazed and
whispered, and if they had known it, the thing would have counted for
naught with them.

"See!" said my lady, patting her Devil's neck--"see, he knows that you
have come, and frets no more."

They rode homeward together, the great beauty and the great duke, and all
the town beheld; and after they had passed him where he stood, John Oxon
mounted his own horse and galloped away, white-lipped and with mad eyes.

"Let me escort you home," the duke had said, "that I may kneel to you