ingly:

"You began to speak in your own way, and you've come to another
way--like going from an almanac to the Mass."

The other smiled. "That's so. I've heard it told by old Shearton at
King's House, who speaks as if he'd stepped out of Shakespeare, and
somehow I seem to hear him talking, and I tell it as he told it last
year to the governor of the Company. Besides, I've listened these seven
years to his style."

"It's a strange beginning--unwritten history of England," said Sir Duke
musingly.

"You shall hear stranger things yet," answered Adderley. "John York
could hardly believe it at first, for the thought of such a thing never
had place in his mind. Besides, the Prince knew how he had looked
upon the lady, and he could not have thought his comrade would come in
between him and his happiness. Perhaps it was the difficulty, adding
spice to the affair, that sent the Prince to the appeal of private
marriage to win the lady, and John York always held that he loved her
truly then, the first and only real affection of his life. The lady--who
can tell what won her over from the honest gentleman to the faithless
prince? That soul of vanity which wraps about the real soul of every
woman fell down at last before the highest office in the land, and the
gifted bearer of the office. But the noble spirit in her brought him
to offer marriage, when he might otherwise have offered, say, a barony.
There is a record of that and more in John York's Memoirs which I will
tell you, for they have settled in my mind like an old song, and I
learned them long ago. I give you John York's words written by his own
hands:

"'I did not think when I beheld thee last, dearest flower of the world's
garden, that I should see thee bloom in that wide field, rank with the
sorrows of royal favour. How did my foolish eyes fill with tears when
I watched thee, all rose and gold in thy cheeks and hair, the light
falling on thee through the chapel window, putting thy pure palm into my
prince's, swearing thy life away, selling the very blossoms of earth's
orchards for the brier beauty of a hidden vineyard! I saw the flying
glories of thy cheeks, the halcyon weather of thy smile, the delicate
lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy step, and, at that moment,
I mourned for thy sake that thou wert not the dullest wench in the land,
for then thou hadst been spared thy miseries, thou hadst been saved the
torture-boot of a lost love and a disacknowledged