idery, not so much listening to
the spoken words as pursuing in her mind a sweet and passionate rhetoric
of her own.

"'Of a stranger I can bear much,'" went on the Lydian tones, "'for I
know not his manners; of an enemy more, for that all proceedeth of
malice; all things of a friend if it be but to try me, nothing if it be
to betray me. I am of Scipio's mind, who had rather that Hannibal should
eat his heart with salt than that Laelius should grieve it with
unkindness; and of the like with Laelius, who chose rather to be slain
with the Spaniards than suspected of Scipio.'"

Damaris quite left her work upon Bathsheba's long gold tresses and sat
with idle hands, her level gaze upon nothing short of the great highway
of the sea and certain ships thereon. Where now was the ship?--off what
green island, what strange, rich shore?

On went the gentleman pensioner. "'I can better take a blister of a
nettle than a prick of a rose; more willing that a raven should peck out
my eyes than a dove. To die of the meat one liketh not is better than
to surfeit of that he loveth; and I had rather an enemy should bury me
quick than a friend belie me when I am dead.'"

The reader made pause and received his due of soft plaudits. But Damaris
dreamed on, the gold thread loose between her fingers. She was the
fairest there, and the gentleman was piqued because she looked not at
him, but at some fine Arachne web of her own weaving.

"Sweet Mistress Damaris--" he began; and again, "Fair Mistress
Damaris--" but Damaris was counting days and heard him not. A lesser
beauty left her work upon King David's crown to laugh aloud, with some
malice and some envy in her mirth. "Prithee, let her alone! She will
dream thus even in the presence. But I have a spell will make her
awaken." She leaned forward and called "_Dione_!" then with renewed
laughter sank back into her seat. "Lo! you now--"

The maid of honor, who at her own name stirred not, at the name of a
poet's giving had started from her dream with widened eyes and an
exquisite blush. The startled face which for one moment she showed her
laughing mates was of a beauty so intelligent and divine that, was it so
she looked, a many King Davids had found excuse for loving one
Bathsheba. Then the inner light which had so informed every feature
sought again its shrine, and Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a
nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest
French shrug the jes