bring
thee happiness. For thy lover hath confessed himself to me."

"Is it happiness to love,--or is it pain?" the girl questioned very low.

"If sometimes it may be pain," the young Queen answered, a shadow
crossing her brow; "yet even then, methinks, one would not have missed
it--so only one hath held one's own heart true: for it discovereth
depths and heights one might not know without it, and bringeth dreams
that make one's soul the fairer. But for thee, _cara_ Margherita--it
shall be all happiness--for thy knight is true and noble like thyself;
and my heart is glad that I may give thee to him."

"Since I have not chosen him--and there are three!" Margherita
interposed faintly--"but if it is of your Majesty's command----?"

"Tell me but this one thing--dost love him, Margherita?"

"If there must be confession, should not the high-priest of this
sacrament be first to hear it?" the proud maid whispered, as she knelt
and kissed her Lady's hand with a sudden grace: but the Queen knew that
she might neither tease nor trifle more.

"My Margherita," she said, folding her closely; "I could dream no
sweeter dream than to know my two very dearest ones worthy of each other
and happy together."

So it was not long before the Court of Nikosia was gladdened with a
festival of old-time splendor, lasting for many days--with tournaments
of knights and jousts of song, and recitals of quaint Cyprian legends
and classic story, and all that their most punctilious custom might
decree for a noble's marriage feast in the days of the _cinque cento_.

* * * * *

But as time slipped by in apparent tranquillity and growing prosperity,
with constant evidences of judicious thought bestowed by the Queen upon
the well-being of her subjects--with the coming and going of artists and
men of letters to her court, and the resuming of all those ancient
Cyprian customs that might minister to the content of the nobles--whom
it was ever most needful to satisfy with a sufficient show of
gaiety--there had nevertheless been an imperceptibly increasing
tightening of the threads of government which stretched far across the
waters to Venice's own blue Adriatic, into the very Council-Chambers of
the Palazzo San Marco.

Even the moneys of Cyprus were flowing somewhat overfreely into the
coffers of the Venetian Provveditori who kept vigilant watch over the
island kingdom--which was, in truth, no longer anything but a Veneti