The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

in your place. Yet sure you must have noted how welcome you are to me, Gerardo?”

      “I can see your highness is always passing kind to me; a poor stranger like me.”

      “No, I am not, Gerardo. I have often been cold to you; rude sometimes; and you are so simple you see not the cause. Alas! I feared for my own heart. I feared to be your slave. I who have hitherto made slaves. Ah! Gerardo, I am unhappy. Ever since you came here I have lived upon your visits. The day you are to come I am bright. The other days I am listless, and wish them fled. You are not like the Roman gallants. You make me hate them. You are ten times braver to my eye; and you are wise and scholarly, and never flatter and lie. I scorn a man that lies. Gerar-do, teach me thy magic; teach me to make thee as happy by my side as I am still by thine.”

      As she poured out these strange words, the princess's mellow voice sunk almost to a whisper, and trembled with half-suppressed passion, and her white hand stole timidly yet earnestly down Gerard's arm, till it rested like a soft bird upon his wrist, and as ready to fly away at a word.

      Destitute of vanity and experience, wrapped up in his Margaret and his art, Gerard had not seen this revelation coming, though it had come by regular and visible gradations.

      He blushed all over. His innocent admiration of the regal beauty that besieged him, did not for a moment displace the absent Margaret's image. Yet it was regal beauty, and wooing with a grace and tenderness he had never even figured in imagination. How to check her without wounding her?

      He blushed and trembled.

      The siren saw, and encouraged him.

      “Poor Gerardo,” she murmured, “fear not; none shall ever harm thee under my wing. Wilt not speak to me, Gerar-do mio?”

      “Signora!” muttered Gerard deprecatingly.

      At this moment his eye, lowered in his confusion, fell on the shapely white arm and delicate hand that curled round his elbow like a tender vine, and it flashed across him how he had just seen that lovely limb employed on Floretta.

      He trembled and blushed.

      “Alas!” said the princess, “I scare him. Am I then so very terrible? Is it my Roman robe? I'll doff it, and habit me as when thou first camest to me. Mindest thou? 'Twas to write a letter to yon barren knight Ercole d'Orsini. Shall I tell thee? 'twas the sight of thee, and thy pretty ways, and thy wise words, made me hate him on the instant. I liked the fool well enough before; or wist I liked him. Tell me now how many times hast thou been here since then. Ah! thou knowest not; lovest me not, I doubt, as I love thee. Eighteen times, Gerardo. And each time dearer to me. The day thou comest not 'tis night, not day, to Claelia. Alas! I speak for both. Cruel boy, am I not worth a word? Hast every day a princess at thy feet? Nay, prithee, prithee, speak to me, Gerar-do.”

      “Signora,” faltered Gerard, “what can I say, that were not better left unsaid? Oh, evil day that ever I came here.”

      “Ah! say not so. 'Twas the brightest day ever shone on me or indeed on thee. I'll make thee confess so much ere long, ungrateful one.”

      “Your highness,” began Gerard, in a low, pleading voice.

      “Call me Claelia, Gerar-do.”

      “Signora, I am too young and too little wise to know how I ought to speak to you, so as not to seem blind nor yet ungrateful. But this I know, I were both naught and ungrateful, and the worst foe e'er you had, did I take advantage of this mad fancy. Sure some ill spirit hath had leave to afflict you withal. For 'tis all unnatural that a princess adorned with every grace should abase her affections on a churl.”

      The princess withdrew her hand slowly from Gerard's wrist.

      Yet as it passed lightly over his arm it seemed to linger a moment at parting.

      “You fear the daggers of my kinsmen,” said she, half sadly, half contemptuously.

      “No more than I fear the bodkins of your women,” said Gerard haughtily. “But I fear God and the saints, and my own conscience.”

      “The truth, Gerardo, the truth! Hypocrisy sits awkwardly on thee. Princesses, while they are young, are not despised for love of God, but of some other woman. Tell me whom thou lovest; and if she is worthy thee I will forgive thee.”

      “No she in Italy, upon my soul.”

      “Ah! there is one somewhere then. Where? where?”

      “In Holland, my native country.”

      “Ah! Marie de Bourgoyne is fair, they say. Yet she is but a child.”

      “Princess, she I love is not noble. She is as I am. Nor is she so fair as thou. Yet is she fair; and linked to my heart for ever by her virtues, and by all the dangers and griefs we have borne together, and for one another. Forgive me; but I would not wrong my Margaret for all the highest dames in Italy.”

      The slighted beauty started to her feet, and stood opposite him, as beautiful, but far more terrible than when she slapped Floretta, for then her cheeks were red, but now they were pale, and her eyes full of concentrated fury.

      “This to my face, unmannered wretch,” she cried. “Was I born to be insulted, as well as scorned, by such as thou? Beware! We nobles brook no rivals. Bethink thee whether is better, the love of a Cesarini, or her hate: for after all I have said and done to thee, it must be love or hate between us, and to the death. Choose now!”

      He looked up at her with wonder and awe, as she stood towering over him in her Roman toga, offering this strange alternative.

      He seemed to have affronted a goddess of antiquity; he a poor puny mortal.

      He sighed deeply, but spoke not.

      Perhaps something in his deep and patient sigh touched a tender chord in that ungoverned creature; or perhaps the time had come for one passion to ebb and another to flow. The princess sank languidly into a seat, and the tears began to steal rapidly down her cheeks.

      “Alas! alas!” said Gerard. “Weep not, sweet lady; your tears they do accuse me, and I am like to weep for company. My kind patron, be yourself; you will live to see how much better a friend I was to you than I seemed.”

      “I see it now, Gerardo,” said the princess. “Friend is the word! the only word can ever pass between us twain. I was mad. Any other man had ta'en advantage of my folly. You must teach me to be your friend and nothing more.”

      Gerard hailed this proposition with joy; and told her out of Cicero how godlike a thing was friendship, and how much better and rarer and more lasting than love: to prove to her he was capable of it, he even told her about Denys and himself.

      She listened with her eyes half shut, watching his words to fathom his character, and learn his weak point.

      At last, she addressed him calmly thus: “Leave me now, Gerardo, and come as usual to-morrow. You will find your lesson well bestowed.”

      She held out her hand to him: he kissed it; and went away pondering deeply this strange interview, and wondering whether he had done prudently or not.

      The next day he was received with marked distance, and the princess stood before him literally like a statue, and after a very short sitting, excused herself and dismissed him. Gerard felt the chilling difference; but said to himself, “She is wise.” So she was in her way.

      The next day he found the princess waiting for him surrounded by young nobles flattering her to the skies. She and they treated him like a dog that could do one little trick they could not. The cavaliers in particular criticised his work with a mass of ignorance and insolence combined that made his cheeks burn.

      The princess watched his face demurely with half-closed eyes at each sting the insects gave him; and when they had fled, had her doors closed against every one of them for their pains.

      The next day Gerard found her alone: cold and silent. After standing to him so some time, she said, “You treated my company with less respect than became you.”

      “Did