The Midnight Queen Part 42

"Bah! You are nothing but a heartless cynic," said Sir Norman, yet with an anxious and irritated flush on his face, too: "What do you know of love?"

"More than you think, as pretty Mariette yonder could depose, if put upon oath. But seriously, Sir Norman, I am afraid your case is of the most desperate; royal rivals are dangerous things!"

"Yet Charles has kind impulses, and has been known to do generous acts."

"Has he? You expect him, beyond doubt, to do precisely as he said; and if Leoline, different from all the rest of her s.e.x, prefers the knight to the king, he will yield her unresistingly to you."

"I have nothing but his word for it!" said Sir Norman, in a distracted tone, "and, at present, can do nothing but bide my time."

"I have been thinking of that, too! I promised, you know, when I left her, last night, that we would return before day-dawn, and rescue her.

The unhappy little beauty will doubtless think I have fallen into the tiger's jaws myself, and has half wept her bright eyes out by this time!"

"My poor Leoline! And O Hubert, if you only knew what she is to you!"

"I do know! She told me she was my sister!"

Sir Norman looked at him in amazement.

"She told you, and you take it like this?"

"Certainly, I take it like this. How would you have me take it? It is nothing to go into hysterics about, after all!"

"Of all the cold-blooded young reptiles I ever saw," exclaimed Sir Norman, with infinite disgust, "you are the worst! If you were told you were to receive the crown of France to-morrow, you would probably open your eyes a trifle, and take it as you would a new cap!"

"Of course I would. I haven't lived in courts half my life to get up a scene for a small matter! Besides, I had an idea from the first moment I saw Leoline that she must be my sister, or something of that sort."

"And so you felt no emotion whatever on hearing it?"

"I don't know as I properly understand what you mean by emotion," said Herbert, reflectively. "But ye-e-s, I did feel somewhat pleased--she is so like me, and so uncommonly handsome!"

"Humph! there's a reason! Did she tell you how she discovered it herself?"

"Let me see--no--I think not--she simply mentioned the fact."

"She did not tell you either, I suppose, that you had more sisters than herself?"

"More than herself! No. That would be a little too much of a good thing!

One sister is quite enough for any reasonable mortal."

"But there were two more, my good young friend!"

"Is it possible?" said Hubert, in a tone that betrayed not the slightest symptom of emotion. "Who are they?"

Sir Norman paused one instant, combating a strong temptation to seize the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts, he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, and walked on.

"Well," said Hubert, "I am waiting to be told."

"You may wait, then!" said Sir Norman, with a smothered growl; "and I give you joy when I tell you. Such extra communicativeness to one so stolid could do no good!"

"But I am not stolid! I am in a perfect agony of anxiety," said Hubert.

"You young jackanapes!" said Sir Norman, half-laughing, half-incensed.

"It were a wise deed and a G.o.dly one to take you by the hind-leg and nape of the neck, and pitch you over yonder wall; but for your master's sake I will desist."

"Which of them?" inquired Hubert, with provoking gravity.

"It would be more to the point if you asked me who the others were, I think."

"So I have, and you merely abused me for it. But I think I know one of them without being told. It is that other fac-simile of Leoline and myself who died in the robber's ruin!"

"Exactly. You and she, and Leoline, were triplets!"

"And who is the other?"

"Her name is La Masque. Have you ever heard it?"

"La Masque! Nonsense!" exclaimed Hubert, with some energy in his voice at last. "You but jest, Sir Norman Kingsley!"

"No such thing! It is a positive fact! She told me the whole story herself!"

"And what is the whole story; and why did she not tell it to me instead of you."

"She told it to Leoline, thinking, probably, she had the most sense; and she told it to me, as Leoline's future husband. It is somewhat long to relate, but it will help to beguile the time while we are waiting for the royal summons."

And hereupon Sir Norman, without farther preface, launched into a rapid resume of La Masque's story, feeling the cold chill with which he had witnessed it creep over him as he narrated her fearful end.

"It struck me," concluded Sir Norman, "that it would be better to procure any papers she might possess at once, lest, by accident, they should fall into other hands; so I rode there directly, and, in spite of the cantankerous old porter, searched diligently, until I found them.

Here they are," said Sir Norman, drawing forth the roll.

"And what do you intend doing with them?" inquired Hubert, glancing at the papers with an unmoved countenance.

"Show them to the king, and, though his mediation with Louis, obtain for you the restoration of your rights."

"And do you think his majesty will give himself so much trouble for the Earl of Rochester's page?"

"I think he will take the trouble to see justice done, or at least he ought to. If he declines, we will take the matter in our own hands, my Hubert; and you and I will seek Louis ourselves. Please G.o.d, the Earl of Rochester's page will yet wear the coronet of the De Montmorencis!"

"And the sister of a marquis will be no unworthy mate even for a Kingsley," said Hubert. "Has La Masque left nothing for her?"

"Do you see this casket?" tapping the one of cared bra.s.s dangling from his belt; "well, it is full of jewels worth a king's ransom. I found them in a drawer of La Masque's house, with directions that they were to be given to her sisters at her death. Miranda being dead, I presume they are all Leoline's now."

"This is a queer business altogether!" said Hubert, musingly; "and I am greatly mistaken if King Louis will not regard it as a very pretty little work of fiction."

"But I have proofs, lad! The authenticity of these papers cannot be doubted."

"With all my heart. I have no objections to be made a marquis of, and go back to la belle France, out of this land of plague and fog. Won't some of my friends here be astonished when they hear it, particularly the Earl of Rochester, when he finds out that he has had a marquis for a page? Ah, here comes George, and bearing a summons from Count L'Estrange at last."

George approached, and intimated that Sir Norman was to follow him to the presence of his master.