Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/131



“I have waited for thy coming, my lord,” she said, in a low, musical voice. “I have waited long!”

And Hector did exactly what any other clean bred, self-conscious young Briton would have done under the circumstances.

He blushed a painful brick-red, tried to remove the gentle pressure from around his neck, and murmured something very foolish and entirely inadequate:

“Please! I say—you mustn't—you know …”—positively mid-Victorian.

And the girl broke into a peal of irrepressible laughter.

“It was not the kiss of the love of passion, my lord,” she said. “It was the kiss of a sister's love.”

“A—sister's love?”

He felt more clumsy, less sure of himself, than ever.

“Yes!” the princess looked at him, utterly serious. “For we are sister and brother, thou and I! Rocked in the same cradle of Fate! Mated to Fate by the wooing of swords!”

Words which were quite without sense or meaning to The Honorable Hector Wade who, at that moment, was wishing fervently that he were back on the yellow, sandy Downs of Sussex.