Part 42 (1/2)
”Bah! You are nothing but a heartless cynic,” said Sir Norman, yet with an anxious and irritated flush on his face, too: ”What do you know of love?”
”More than you think, as pretty Mariette yonder could depose, if put upon oath. But seriously, Sir Norman, I am afraid your case is of the most desperate; royal rivals are dangerous things!”
”Yet Charles has kind impulses, and has been known to do generous acts.”
”Has he? You expect him, beyond doubt, to do precisely as he said; and if Leoline, different from all the rest of her s.e.x, prefers the knight to the king, he will yield her unresistingly to you.”
”I have nothing but his word for it!” said Sir Norman, in a distracted tone, ”and, at present, can do nothing but bide my time.”
”I have been thinking of that, too! I promised, you know, when I left her, last night, that we would return before day-dawn, and rescue her.
The unhappy little beauty will doubtless think I have fallen into the tiger's jaws myself, and has half wept her bright eyes out by this time!”
”My poor Leoline! And O Hubert, if you only knew what she is to you!”
”I do know! She told me she was my sister!”
Sir Norman looked at him in amazement.
”She told you, and you take it like this?”
”Certainly, I take it like this. How would you have me take it? It is nothing to go into hysterics about, after all!”
”Of all the cold-blooded young reptiles I ever saw,” exclaimed Sir Norman, with infinite disgust, ”you are the worst! If you were told you were to receive the crown of France to-morrow, you would probably open your eyes a trifle, and take it as you would a new cap!”
”Of course I would. I haven't lived in courts half my life to get up a scene for a small matter! Besides, I had an idea from the first moment I saw Leoline that she must be my sister, or something of that sort.”
”And so you felt no emotion whatever on hearing it?”
”I don't know as I properly understand what you mean by emotion,” said Herbert, reflectively. ”But ye-e-s, I did feel somewhat pleased--she is so like me, and so uncommonly handsome!”
”Humph! there's a reason! Did she tell you how she discovered it herself?”
”Let me see--no--I think not--she simply mentioned the fact.”
”She did not tell you either, I suppose, that you had more sisters than herself?”
”More than herself! No. That would be a little too much of a good thing!
One sister is quite enough for any reasonable mortal.”
”But there were two more, my good young friend!”
”Is it possible?” said Hubert, in a tone that betrayed not the slightest symptom of emotion. ”Who are they?”
Sir Norman paused one instant, combating a strong temptation to seize the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts, he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, and walked on.
”Well,” said Hubert, ”I am waiting to be told.”
”You may wait, then!” said Sir Norman, with a smothered growl; ”and I give you joy when I tell you. Such extra communicativeness to one so stolid could do no good!”
”But I am not stolid! I am in a perfect agony of anxiety,” said Hubert.