ake her own.

"Our Sovereign Lady doth answer right royally," he said, as he bowed his
acquiescence in her command, passing his helmet to one of the knights
who came thronging behind him, and stood confronting her--very courteous
and deferent in his bearing, though the breeze was tossing his waving
hair about his throat with a hint of comradery, and there was a world of
love and mastery in his charming face.

Her own--very fair and true and radiant with girlish beauty--flushed,
then paled again, with the quickened beating of her heart, and her eyes,
eloquent in confession, were fixed on his, which deepened to a glow of
pride and pleasure; yet he was loth to make an end of her charming
confusion.

"Hath this missive from his Majesty no meaning for his bride of Venice?"
he asked, coming nearer.

"Janus!" she cried--all her soul shining in her eyes; and then, in her
own soft, Italian tongue:

"How should my heart _not_ know thee!"

VIII

Caterina Veneta, Queen of Cyprus, stood on a high balcony of the summer
palace in the Casal of Potamia, one beautiful June morning at early
dawn, waving farewell to the cavalcade of nobles who were winding up the
pass that led to the great forests where the patricians of the island
were wont to pursue their favorite pastime. Janus was among them,
leading in the chase as in every art that demanded agility and
prowess--lithe, strong and beautiful in her eyes as in the first days of
their short romance.

It was the one hour of the torrid day when the air was fragrant with the
breath of flowers and tingling with the freshness of the sea; and in the
sparkle of the morning, with sunshine in her heart and love-light in her
eyes, she was very fair to look upon.

The scene had been exhilarating, full of color and motion--laughter and
repartee mingling with the adieux of the knights and seigneurs to their
ladies, the notes of the hunting-horns, the snorts of impatient steeds,
the short expectant bark of the dogs, as the Master of the hounds, the
young Count of Jaffa, with his great army of hunters and attendants,
moved before the cavalcade into the heart of the forest. A fantastic
train it was, with the picturesque costumes of the riders, the tinted
tails of their horses and dogs flashing an orange trail in the
sunshine, a touch of coquetry much in vogue among the young Cyprian
nobles of the day.

Caterina had watched the start with pride in her husband's grace and
courtly bear