oated
in the shadows.

"Is it not wonderful?" she asked.

"It is indeed, my Wildenai," he answered earnestly. "Never in all my
travels, methinks, have I seen aught before like this your island here!
It seems to me indeed a charmed land, a kind of magic isle!"

One day it rained, the last belated rain of winter. But even the storm
brought pleasures of its own, for, seated on the pile of skins beside
him, the little gray fox curled contentedly at her feet, Wildenai worked
at her loom. Within its dull-colored warp a blanket, woven in a strange
design of mingled red, and black, and white, grew slowly beneath her
busy fingers.

For hours the maiden drew the short woolen threads in and out while the
young man, stretched lazily upon the ground, told her many a tale of the
England he had left. Then, quite without warning, she ceased her work
and sat pensively watching through the opening in the rocks the long
gray swell of the sea.

"And what is it now, my princess?" laughed young Harold. "The pattern is
not yet finished, nor is the rain abated."

"Ah, senor Harold lord," wistfully replied the girl, "I was but wishing
I had been born one of those same fair English maids with the eyes of
blue and golden hair you tell about. Then would you love me even as
you do them!" she added artlessly, and leaned her chin upon her hand,
considering. A secret trembled on her lips.

"And how if I were Spanish born?" she questioned, and lifted hesitating,
frightened eyes to his, "dark to look at, that I know well, but even so,
the white man's kind of princess, who also has a throne?"

And all unwitting Lord Harold answered scornfully, "Spanish! Say no
such word to me! The English hate the Spanish!" Fiercely he caught up a
pebble and sent it whirling out across the water. "Even now their robber
king plans his huge armada to take our queen and rule our land, but
that, by the holy virgin herself, shall never be! Sooner will every drop
of blood in bonny England be spilt. Never could I make thee understand
how much I hope to be at home before he comes! Spanish indeed! Nay,
never let me hear the hateful word again!"

Then, noting her puzzled, downcast face, with the impulsive
changeableness which had so endeared him to her, he caught one little
brown hand and raised it to his lips.

"But I do love thee even as thou art, my Wildenai," he told her with the
careless assurance of one much older speaking to a child. "Is not a wild
rose sweet a