nobles--as, from childhood up, in whatever
teaching from books or men, he had distanced all his comrades--with that
strange facility and fascination with which the Genius of Cyprus might
have endowed her favorite in that lavish land, beloved of the gods,
where her great sea-bound plains were billows of flowers under a long
summer sky, and Nature's gifts came crowding, each upon each, in
bewildering redundancy.

Laughter-loving, born to conquer, quick to reward, Janus was tender and
generous to a fault; for it was whispered that he could take what lay
nearest to give to those who offered him adoring service on his
triumphal march, and that the murmur of the wronged belonged to the more
serious side of life for which his full-flowing Greek blood had small
patience. Such strange, unlikely tales one's enemy may tell!

And for his religion--be it Greek, or Latin, or whatever else--had he
not been named Archbishop of Nikosia at the responsible age of fifteen,
before he had exchanged the Episcopal Mitre for the Royal Crown?

These things were told, in all truth, of Janus II, King of Cyprus: and
if some others were known, they were not discussed. For the monarch had
lost his heart to the rare charm of the youthful Caterina, niece to a
Venetian noble who had become his friend in Cyprus, and had more than
once stood his helper with good Venetian gold; and who, in innocence or
wile, had one day given him sight of the girl's fair face with its
tender flush like a flower in spring, painted with rare skill by the
greatest artist of Venice. The breeze might have toyed with that mist of
golden hair, and the great dark eyes--softly luminous--had the
expectancy of a gazelle awaiting the joy of the daydawn. She was
daughter to one of the most ancient and noble of the patrician houses,
in direct descent, so the Cornari claimed, of the Cornelii of Rome.

"There need be no haste," the Signor Andrea had said lightly, as he
returned the miniature to its case blazoned in pearls with the arms of
the Cornari, "for the child is but fourteen, though she hath the
loveliness of twenty. But it is the way with our patricians of Venice,
and Messer Marco of the Cornari, father to Caterina, is already planning
with an ancient noble house of the elder branch with estates of unknown
wealth, for the marriage of his daughter. Thus the fancy of the King
must pass--there will be another--in Venice or Cyprus--the world is
large."

"Nay, none so beautiful,"