"Ah! let me prove to you that you are wrong. You are like Lady Alcarda.
Let me be your knight. I would be content to serve you in all chivalry,
and in all honor, until death, if you would reward me with a kind word
and a smile."
His handsome young face looked so eager, so wistful, that the coquette's
heart smote her for one half moment. Knowing what was before him, was it
not too cruel to lead him on? But the short-lived feeling of compunction
soon died. She bent her head and the perfume of the flowers she carried
reached him.
"Would you be my knight?" she said; "would you go through danger and
peril to serve me?"
"I would die for you," he replied, simply; "quite content, if you smiled
on me as I died."
"Do you mean it, without any romance or nonsense? Seriously, would you,
to serve me?"
"Yes: and count all loss as gain."
"Then you shall be my knight, my friend. I am not a queen. I have no
sword to lay on your shoulder, but I place my hand in yours, and I
accept your loyal service."
She laid her white hand in his, and the touch of those slender fingers
thrilled him as nothing had ever done before.
"I am your sovereign liege," she said, with a smile. "If I come to you
in distress you are sworn, remember, to help me. If I require your
service, it is mine."
"Yes," he said; "at all times and at all hours."
"I shall go through life the more happily for knowing that I have so
true and chivalrous a defender," she replied.
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