[1] See "Yule Logs," 1898 (Longmans & Co.), "The King of Spain's Will."
The prettiest epithet a man can bestow on any woman! So she remembered it! remembered that I had called her "sweetheart" in all the impudence of boyhood and the possession of my guidon in the _mousquetaires_, and when I did not know that she was a princess of one of the most ancient and powerful families in Catalonia, and in possession of enormous estates and great wealth.
But did she remember another thing also--namely, that after being highly indignant with me for my presumption, she had laughed and whispered that pretty word to me in return? Did she remember that? If not, I did. And now I would see for it.
An hour later I was outside the great door of the Hôtel de Carbajal, and a lackey answering my summons, I learned that the Princess was within. Whereon I bade him say that Lord Trent waited below to pay his devoirs to her, if it might be that she would receive him.
"Her Highness expects milor," the man said. "Will milor give himself the trouble to follow me?"
Whereon "milor," attired in his best black satin suit--for, alas! he had but recently returned from England, and the funeral of his father--and silver lace, did follow the man through the great gloomy house, and along corridor after corridor, he thinking all the time of what the fellow had said--that "her Highness expected him." "So," "milor" said to himself, "she knew I would come."
Then the door opened, and the footman announced "Milor Trent," and for some reason the midsummer sun seemed to dazzle my eyes, and I saw a figure spring--that is the word, "spring"--from a deep fauteuil, and I felt two slim hands in mine, and I heard a well-remembered voice say, "So you have come, my lord."
"Yes, I have come, your Highness. You knew very well that I should come. Yet, yet," for, somehow, I at once began to grow bold, "there was no word of 'Highness' nor of 'lord' in the old days. Then you were 'a girl called Damaris,' and----"
"And," she interrupted, with a soft laugh, "you were an impudent young soldier called Blue Eyes. But now we are old, staid people. I am twenty-four."
"And I am twenty-five," I interrupted in my turn.
"Wherefore we have grown sober and steady. Still, notwithstanding that, you may tell me if you choose whether you think I have aged very much."