De Lacy had purposed letting her defeat him by a margin so slender as not to seem intentional, but catching the dark eyes of the King fixed on him with sharp significance, he understood that he was to win if he could.  So he drew with care, and pierced the kerchief thrice.

De Lacy received the bit of lace from the page and proffered it to the Countess.

“It is quite destroyed,” he said.  “I am sorry.”

She laughed lightly.  “You owe me no apologies, and need feel no regret.  You won it honestly—­and I accept it now as a gift; a guerdon of your prowess and your courtesy.”

He bowed; and as his glance sought the King, the latter nodded, ever so lightly, in approval.

An hour later, after the repast was served, the trumpet gave the signal for departure.  As De Lacy stepped forward to hold the stirrup, Richard waved him aside, and putting one hand on his horse’s wither, vaulted easily into place.

“Look to the ladies!” he called; “and do you, Sir Aymer, escort the Countess of Clare.  It is meet that the King of the Bow should attend upon his Queen.”

Then dropping his tones, so that they were audible only to De Lacy, he said with a familiar earnestness:  “And if you do not turn the kerchief to advantage, you deserve no further aid.”

Reining over beside the Queen, he motioned for the others to follow and dashed off toward Windsor.  In a trice they were gone, and, save for the servants, the Countess and De Lacy were alone.

She was standing beside Wilda waiting to be put up, and when Aymer tried to apologize for the delay, she stopped him.

“It was no fault of yours,” she said—­then added archly, head turned half aside:  “and you must blame Richard Plantagenet for being left with me.”

“Blame him?” he exclaimed, lifting her slowly—­very slowly—­into saddle. . .  “Blame him! . . .  Do you think I call it so?” and fell to arranging her skirt, and lingering over it so plainly that the Countess smiled in unreserved amusement.  Yet she did not hurry him.  And when he had dallied as long as he thought he dared, he stole a quick glance upward—­and she let him see the smile.

“Am I very clumsy?” he asked, swinging up on Selim.

She waited until they had left the clearing and the grooms behind them and were among the great tall trees: 

“Surely not . . . only very careful,” she said teasingly.

He was puzzled at this new mood that had come with the archery and still tarried—­this careless gayety under circumstances which, hitherto, would have made her severe and distant.  He was so used to being frowned upon, reproved, and held at the point that he was quite blind to the change it signaled.  He bent his eyes on his horse’s mane.  He thought of the King’s words as to the kerchief and longed for a bit of his astute penetration and wonderful tact, that he might solve this provoking riddle beside him and lead up to what was beating so fiercely in his breast.  In his perplexity he looked appealingly toward her.