“Then,” says her Grace, more slowly still, “that was his name?  I have heard it before.”

“I heard it again,” said the old story-teller, eager to reach his climax.  “And ’tis that ends the story so finely.  ’Twas by chance talk of travellers I heard it nigh six months later.  The very day after he stood here and searched for his package he disappeared from sight and has not been heard of since.  And the last who set eyes on him was my Lady Dunstanwolde, who is now a Duchess at Camylott, where your camp is.  ’Twas her name brought the story back to me.”

Her Grace rose, catching her breath with a laugh.  She turned her face towards the window, as if, of a sudden, attracted by somewhat to be seen outside.

“’Tis a good story,” she said, but for a moment the crimson roses on her cheeks had shuddered to whiteness.  Why, no man could tell.  Her host did not see her countenance—­perhaps my lord Duke did not.

“’Tis a good story!” she laughed again.

“And well told,” added my lord Duke.

Her Grace turned to them both once more.  Through some wondrous exercise of her will she looked herself again.

“As we are in luck to-day,” she said, “and it has passed the time, let us count it in the reckoning.”

A new, almost wild, fantastic gayety seized her.  She flung herself into her playing of the part of a gipsy woman with a spirit which was a marvel to behold.  She searched his Grace’s pockets and her own for pence, and counted up the reckoning on the table, saying that they could but afford this or that much, that they must save this coin for a meal, that for a bed, this to pay toll on the road.  She used such phrases of the gipsy jargon as she had picked up, and made jokes and bantering speeches which set their host cackling with laughter.  Osmonde had seen her play a fantastic part before on their whimsical holidays, but never one which suited her so well, and in which she seemed so full of fire and daring wit.  She was no Duchess, a man might have sworn, but a tall, splendid, black-eyed laughing gipsy woman, who, to the man who was her partner, would be a fortune every day, and a fortune not of luck alone, but of gay spirit and bravery and light-hearted love.

That night the moon shone white and clear, and in the mid hours my lord Duke waked from his sleep suddenly, and saw the brightness streaming full through the oriel window, and in the fair flood of it his love’s white figure kneeling.

“Gerald,” she cried, clinging to him when he went to her. “’Twas I awaked you.  I called, though I did not speak.”

“I heard, as I should hear if I lay dead,” he answered low.

Her hair was all unbound for the night—­her black, wondrous hair which he so loved—­and from its billowy cloud her face looked at him wild and white, her mouth quivering.

“Gerald,” she said, “look out with me.”

Together they looked forth from the wide window into the beauty of the night, up into the great vault of Heaven, where the large silver moon sailed in the blue, the stars shining faintly before her soft brilliance.