Simon Dale | Page 7

that Cydaria stayed so long.
"I don't doubt that you'll make good use of the time," she said, as with a fine dignity she waved me to the door. Girl as she was, she had caught or inherited the grand air that great ladies use.
Gloomily I passed out, to fall into the hands of my lord, who was walking on the terrace. He caught me by the arm, laughing in good-humoured mockery.
"You've had a touch of sentiment, eh, you rogue?" said he. "Well, there's little harm in that, since the girl leaves us to-morrow."
"Indeed, my lord, there was little harm," said I, long-faced and rueful. "As little as my lady herself could wish." (At this he smiled and nodded.) "Mistress Barbara will hardly so much as look at me."
He grew graver, though the smile still hung about his lips.
"They gossip about you in the village, Simon," said he. "Take a friend's counsel, and don't be so much with the lady at the cottage. Come, I don't speak without reason." He nodded at me as a man nods who means more than he will say. Indeed, not a word more would he say, so that when I left him I was even more angry than when I parted from his daughter. And, the nature of man being such as Heaven has made it, what need to say that I bent my steps to the cottage with all convenient speed? The only weapon of an ill-used lover (nay, I will not argue the merits of the case again) was ready to my hand.
Yet my impatience availed little; for there, on the seat that stood by the door, sat my good friend the Vicar, discoursing in pleasant leisure with the lady who named herself Cydaria.
"It is true," he was saying. "I fear it is true, though you're over young to have learnt it."
"There are schools, sir," she returned, with a smile that had (or so it seemed to me) a touch--no more--of bitterness in it, "where such lessons are early learnt."
"They are best let alone, those schools," said he.
"And what's the lesson?" I asked, drawing nearer.
Neither answered. The Vicar rested his hands on the ball of his cane, and suddenly began to relate old Betty Nasroth's prophecy to his companion. I cannot tell what led his thoughts to it, but it was never far from his mind when I was by. She listened with attention, smiling brightly in whimsical amusement when the fateful words, pronounced with due solemnity, left the Vicar's lips.
"It is a strange saying," he ended, "of which time alone can show the truth."
She glanced at me with merry eyes, yet with a new air of interest. It is strange the hold these superstitions have on all of us; though surely future ages will outgrow such childishness.
"I don't know what the prophecy means," said she; "yet one thing at least would seem needful for its fulfilment--that Mr Dale should become acquainted with the King."
"True!" cried the Vicar eagerly. "Everything stands on that, and on that we stick. For Simon cannot love where the King loves, nor know what the King hides, nor drink of the King's cup, if he abide all his days here in Hatchstead. Come, Simon, the plague is gone!"
"Should I then be gone too?" I asked. "But to what end? I have no friends in London who would bring me to the notice of the King."
The Vicar shook his head sadly. I had no such friends, and the King had proved before now that he could forget many a better friend to the throne than my dear father's open mind had made of him.
"We must wait, we must wait still," said the Vicar. "Time will find a friend."
Cydaria had become pensive for a moment, but she looked up now, smiling again, and said to me:
"You'll soon have a friend in London."
Thinking of Barbara, I answered gloomily, "She's no friend of mine."
"I did not mean whom you mean," said Cydaria, with twinkling eyes and not a whit put out. "But I also am going to London."
I smiled, for it did not seem as though she would be a powerful friend, or able to open any way for me. But she met my smile with another so full of confidence and challenge that my attention was wholly caught, and I did not heed the Vicar's farewell as he rose and left us.
"And would you serve me," I asked, "if you had the power?"
"Nay, put the question as you think it," said she. "Would you have the power to serve me if you had the will? Is not that the doubt in your mind?"
"And if it were?"
"Then, indeed, I do not know how to answer; but strange things happen there in London, and it may be that some day even I should