nce grants me my father's
rights and estates!" he said, with a certain sternness in his tone.

"Let me look at your hand," she answered, with a gentle inclination
of her fair head, from which the lace that had shrouded it now
streamed back in the cool wind of evening.

Stopping Darnaway, the young Earl gave the girl his hand, and the
white palfrey came to rest close beneath the shoulder of the black war
charger.

"To-morrow," she said, looking at his palm, "to-morrow you will be
Duke of Touraine. I promise it to you by my power of divination. Does
that satisfy you?"

"I fear you are a witch, or else a being compound of rarer elements
than mere flesh and blood," said the Earl.

"Is that a spirit's hand," she said, laughing lightly and giving her
own rosy fingers into his, "or could even the Justicer of Galloway
find it in his heart to burn these as part of the body of a witch?"

She shuddered and pretended to gaze piteously up at him from under the
long lashes which hardly raised themselves from her cheek.

"Spirit-slender, spirit-white they are," he replied, "and as for being
the fingers of a witch--doubtless you are a witch indeed. But I will
not burn so fair things as these, save as it might be with the
fervours of my lips."

And he stooped and pressed kiss after kiss upon her hand.

Gently she withdrew her fingers from his grasp and rode further apart,
yet not without one backward glance of perfectest witchery.

"I doubt you have been overmuch at Court already," she said. "I did
not well to ask you to go thither."

"Why must I not go thither?" he asked.

"Because I shall be there," she replied softly, courting him yet again
with her eyes.

As they rode on together through the rich twilight dusk, the young man
observed her narrowly as often as he could.

Her skin was fair with a dazzling clearness, which even the gathering
gloom only caused to shine with a more perfect brilliance, as if a
halo of light dwelt permanently beneath its surface. Faint responsive
roses bloomed on either cheek and, as it seemed, cast a shadow of
their colour down her graceful neck. Dark eyes shone above, fresh and
dewy with love and youth, and smiled out with all ancientest
witcheries and allurements in their depths. Her lithe, slender body
was simply clad in a fair white cloth of some foreign fabric, and her
waist, of perfectest symmetry, was cinctured by a broad ring of solid
silver, which, to the young man, looked so sle