Ferne advanced, and bending his knee to the short turf, took and kissed her hand.  “Fair and sweet lady,” he said, “I made suit to your brother, and he has given me, his friend, this happy chance.  Now I make my supplication to you, to whom I would be that, and more.  All this week have I vainly sought for speech with you alone.  But now these blessed trees hem us round; there is none to spy or listen—­and here is a mossy bank, fit throne for a faery queen.  Will you hear me speak?”

The maid of honor looked at him with rose bloom upon her cheeks, and in her eyes, although they smiled, a moisture as of half-sprung tears.  “Is it of Henry?” she asked.  “Ah, sir, you have been so good to him!  He is very dear to me....  I would that I could thank you—­”

As she spoke she moved with him to the green bank, sat down, and clasped her hands about her knees.  The man who on the morrow should leave behind him court and court ways, and all fair sights such as this, leaned against the oak and looked down upon her.  When, after a little silence, he began to speak, it was like a right courtier of the day.

“Fair Mistress Damaris,” he said, “your brother is my friend, but to-day I would speak of my friend’s friend, and that is myself, and your servant, lady.  To-morrow I go from this garden of the world, this no-other Paradise, this court where Dian reigns, but where Venus comes as a guest, her boy in her hand.  Where I go I know not, nor what thread Clotho is spinning.  Strange dangers are to be found in strange places, and Jove and lightning are not comfortable neighbors.  Ulysses took moly in his hand when there came to meet him Circe’s gentlemen pensioners, and Gyges’s ring not only saved him from peril, but brought him wealth and great honor.  What silly mariner in my ship hath not bought or begged mithridate or a pinch of achimenius wherewith to make good his voyage?  And shall not I, who have much more at stake, procure me an enchantment?”

The lady’s fringed lids lifted in one swift upward glance.  “Your valor, sir, should prove your surest charm.  But there is the new alchemist—­”

“He cannot serve my need, hath not what I want.  I want—­” He hesitated for a moment; then spoke on with a certain restrained impetuosity that became him well:  “There is a honey-wax which, being glazed about the heart, holdeth within it, forever, a song so sweet that the chanting of the sirens matters not; there is that precious stone which, as the magnet draweth the iron, so ever constraineth Honor, bidding him mount every breach, climb higher, higher, higher yet! there is that fragrant leaf which oft is fed with tears, and often sighing worn, yet, so worn, inspireth valor more heroical than that of Achilles!  Such a charm I seek, sweet lady.”

Mistress Damaris Sedley, a favorite of the Countess of Pembroke, and a court lady of some months’ standing, could parley euphuism with the best, and yet to-day it seemed to her that plain English might better serve the turn.  However: