She turned slightly, looking at him from beneath the gold star.  “Wish me no such happy wishes!  Let me not think that such wishes dwell in your heart.  Since that day at Whitehall I have written to you—­written twice.  Why did you never answer?”

He looked down upon his clasped hands.  “What was there to be said?  I thought, ’I have sorely wounded her whom I love, and with my own words I have seared that wound as with white heat of iron.  Now God keep me man enough to say no farther word!’”

“I was benumbed that day,” she said; “I was frozen.  My brother’s face came between us....  Oh, my brother!...  Since that day I have seen Sir John Nevil—­”

“Then a just man told you my story justly,” he began, but she interrupted him, her breath coming faster.

“I have also made other inquiry; on my knees, on my face, in the dead of the night when I knew that thou, too, waked, I have asked of God, and of our Lord the Christ who suffered....  I know not if they heard me, there be so many that clamor in their ears....”  With a quick movement she arose from the stone seat and began to pace the grass-plot, her hands clasped behind her head, the gold star yet bright in the late, late sunshine.  “I would they had answered me distinctly.  Perhaps they did....  But be that as it may be I will follow my own heart, I will go my own way—­”

He arose and began to walk with her.  “And thy heart led thee this way?” he asked in a whisper.

She flashed upon him a look so bright that it was as if high noon had returned to the garden.  “Pluck me yonder lily,” she said.  “It is the first I have smelled this year.”

He brought it to her, trembling.  “Presently it will close,” he said, “never to open again.”

“That also is among the things we know not,” she answered.  “Think you not there is one who revives the souls of men?”

“Ay, I believe it,” he answered.  They paced again the green to its flowery margin.

“Give me yon spray of love-lies-bleeding,” she said; then as it rested against the lily in her hand, “Wounds may be cured,” she said.  “I have heard talk here, there, at the court even, else, beshrew me, if I had come this way to-day!  I know that thou goest forth—­” Her voice broke and the gold star shook with the trembling of her frame.  “I know that thou mayst never, never, never return.  I will pray for thy soul’s welfare....  See! there is a heartsease at my feet.”

He knelt, but touched not the floweret, instead caught at the long folds of her silver gown and held her where she stood.  “For my soul’s welfare, thou balm from heaven!” he cried.  “For only my soul’s welfare?”

“No, no,” she answered.  “For the welfare of all of thee, soul and body—­soul and body!” She bent over him, and there fell from her eyes a bright rain of tears, quickly come, quickly checked.  “Ah, a contrary world of queens and guardians!” she cried.  “Oh, my God! if thou mightst only make me thy wife before thou goest!”