Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/215

 never saw his face again; though some pretended to see the brown and yellow robe moving swiftly along the passages of the Castle of hot summer nights, for many a year after; but these clever personages are suspected to have had the sun still in their eyes or to have seen double. But when the stranger had left the bower Eva and her ladies all sat quietquite [sic] still and close together, for their hearts were beating swiftly and their breasts heaving violently, and their breath came quick and short; while the blood ran a furious course through their veins even as the knights make their onset of battle. And it well known that all these symptoms are bad ones, prognostic of mischief, especially if ladies are thus affected, since they are a little apt to let their imagination get the better of them, and to kick poor old Master Logick in his tattered gown and rusty cassock out of doors. And who comes in when Genus and Species go out? Why the most puissant prince and paramount Lord Phantasy, all gallantly bedecked in gold and green, bringing with him a host of mad whimsies, who are his great officers of state; and his Lord Marshall is none but Love. And to be plain these giddy girls made wild work that night, and for some nights after, and stored up trouble for themselves which made them wish they had never heard the stranger's voice, for they all agreed that it was this, rather than the matter of his stories, which turned their heads and made them forgetful when they ought to have remembered. But in Eva's brain the relation of the Rose took root, and grew day by day, till she forgot or