Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/108

104 call to the chase, leaped up, and bayed in hoarse but appropriate chorus.

The iadies now re-appeared in the side galleries, and overlooked the scene of festivity below. The loveliest of many counties were there; but the fairest was a young maid of middle size, in a dress disencumbered of ornament, and possessed of one of those free and graceful forms which may be met with in other counties, but for which our own Derbyshire alone is famous. Those who admired the grace of her person were no less charmed with her simplicity and natural meekness of deportment. Nature did much for her, and art strove in vain to rival her with others; while health, that handmaid of beauty, supplied her eye and her cheek with the purest light and the freshest roses. Her short and rosy upper-lip was slightly curled, with as much of maiden sanctity, perhaps, as pride; her white high forehead was shaded with locks of sunny brown, while her large and dark hazel eyes beamed with free and unaffected modesty. Those who observed her closely might see her eyes, as she glanced about, sparkling for a moment with other lights, but scarce less holy, than those of devotion and awe. Of all the knights present, it was impossible to say who inspired her with those love-fits of flushing joy and delicious agitation; each hoped himself the happy person, for none could look on Dora Vernon without awe and love. She leaned her white bosom, shining through the veil which shaded it, near one of the minstrels' harps; and, looking round on the presence, her eyes grew brighter as she looked—at least, so vowed the knights, and so sang the minstrels.

All the knights arose when Dora Vernon appeared. "Fill all your wine-cups, knights," said Sir Lucas Peverel. "Fill them to the brim," said Sir Henry Avenel. "And drain them out, were they deeper than the Wye," said Sir Godfrey Gernon. "To the health of the Princess of the Peak," said Sir Ralph Cavendish. "To the health of Dora Vernon," said Sir Hugh de Wodensley; "beauty is above titles; she is the loveliest maiden a knight ever looked on, with the sweetest name too." "And yet, Sir Knight," said Peverel, filling his cup, "I know one who thinks so humbly of the fair name of Vernon, as to wish it charmed into that of De Wodensley." "He is not master of a spell so profound," said Avenel. "And yet he is master of his sword," answered De Wodensley, with a darkening brow.