‘To Diane?’ said the lady, inquiringly.

‘To Mademoiselle Diane de Ribaumont,’ he corrected himself, ashamed of his English rusticity.  ’I beg pardon if I spoke too familiarly of her.’

‘She should be flattered by M. le Baron’s slightest recollection,’ said the lady, with an ironical tone that there was no time to analyze, and with a mutual gesture of courtesy he followed Sidney to where Sir Francis awaited them.

‘Well, what think you of the French court?’ asked Sidney, so soon as the young men were in private.

’I only know that you may bless your good fortune that you stand in no danger from a wife from thence.’

‘Ha!’ cried Sidney, laughing, ’you found your lawful owner.  Why did you not present me?’

‘I was ashamed of her bold visage.’

‘What!—­was she the beauteous demoiselle I found you gallanting,’ said Philip Sidney, a good deal entertained, ’who was gazing at you with such visible admiration in her languishing black eyes?’

‘The foul fiend seize their impudence!’

‘Fie! for shame! thus to speak of your own wife,’ said the mischievous Sidney, ‘and the fairest——­’

’Go to, Sidney.  Were she fairer than Venus, with a kingdom to her dower, I would none of a woman without a blush.’

‘What, in converse with her wedded husband,’ said Sidney.  ’Were not that over-shamefastness?’

’Nay, now, Sidney, in good sooth give me your opinion.  Should she set her fancy on me, even in this hour, am I bound in honour to hold by this accursed wedlock—­lock, as it may well be called?’

‘I know no remedy,’ said Sidney, gravely, ’save the two enchanted founts of love and hate.  They cannot be far away, since it was at the siege of Paris that Rinaldo and Orlando drank thereof.’

Another question that Berenger would fain have asked Sidney, but could not for very shame and dread of mockery, was, whether he himself were so dangerously handsome as the lady had given him to understand.  With a sense of shame, he caught up the little mirror in his casket, and could not but allow to himself that the features he there saw were symmetrical—­the eyes azure, the complexion of a delicate fairness, such as he had not seen equaled, except in those splendid Lorraine princes; nor could he judge of the further effect of his open-faced frank simplicity and sweetness of expression—­ contemptible, perhaps, to the astute, but most winning to the world-weary.  He shook his head at the fair reflection, smiled as he saw the colour rising at his own sensation of being a fool, and then threw it aside, vexed with himself for being unable not to feel attracted by the first woman who had shown herself struck by his personal graces, and yet aware that this was the very thing he had been warned against, and determined to make all the resistance in his power to a creature whose very beauty and enchantment gave him a sense of discomfort.