“All hail, my sister!” answered Nyleptha. “Draw thou near. Fear not, I give thee safe conduct.”
Sorais answered with a haughty look, and swept on up the hall till she stood right before the thrones.
“A boon, O Queen!” she cried again.
“Speak on, my sister; what is there that I can give thee who hath half our kingdom?”
“Thou canst tell me a true word—me and the people of Zu-Vendis. Art thou, or art thou not, about to take this foreign wolf,” and she pointed to Sir Henry with her toy spear, “to be a husband to thee, and share thy bed and throne?”
Curtis winced at this, and turning towards Sorais, said to her in a low voice, “Methinks that yesterday thou hadst other names than wolf to call me by, O Queen!” and I saw her bite her lips as, like a danger flag, the blood flamed red upon her face. As for Nyleptha, who is nothing if not original, she, seeing that the thing was out, and that there was nothing further to be gained by concealment, answered the question in a novel and effectual manner, inspired thereto, as I firmly believe, by coquetry and a desire to triumph over her rival.
Up she rose, and descending from the throne, swept in all the glory of her royal grace on to where her lover stood. There she stopped and untwined the golden snake that was wound around her arm. Then she bade him kneel, and he dropped on one knee on the marble before her; and next, taking the golden snake with both her hands, she bent the pure soft metal round his neck, and when it was fast, deliberately kissed him on the brow and called him her “dear lord.”
“Thou seest,” she said, when the excited murmur of the spectators had died away, addressing her sister as Sir Henry rose to his feet, “I have put my collar round the ‘wolf’s’ neck, and behold! he shall be my watchdog, and that is my answer to thee, Queen Sorais, my sister, and to those with thee. Fear not,” she went on, smiling sweetly on her lover, and pointing to the golden snake she had twined round his massive throat, “if my yoke be heavy, yet is it of pure gold, and it shall not gall thee.”
Then, turning to the audience, she continued, in a clear proud tone: “Ay, Lady of the Night, Lords, Priests, and People here gathered together, by this sign do I take the foreigner to husband, even here in the face of ye all. What, am I a Queen, and yet not free to choose the man whom I will love? Then should I be lower than the meanest girl in all my provinces. Nay, he hath won my heart, and with it goes my hand, and throne, and all I have—ay, had he been a beggar instead of a great lord, fairer and stronger than any here, and having more wisdom and knowledge of strange things, I had given him all; how much more so, then, being what he is!” And she took his hand and gazed proudly on him, and holding it, stood there boldly facing the people. And such was her sweetness, and the power and dignity of her person, and so beautiful she looked standing hand in hand there at her lover’s side, so sure of him and of herself, and so ready to risk all things and endure all things for him, that most of those who saw the sight, which I am sure no one of them will ever forget, caught the fire from her eyes and the happy colour from her blushing face, and cheered her like wild things. It was a bold stroke for her to make, and it appealed to the imagination; but human nature in Zu-Vendis, as elsewhere, loves that which is bold and not afraid to break a rule, and is moreover peculiarly susceptible to appeals to its poetical side.
And so the people cheered till the roof rang; but “Sorais of the Night” stood there with downcast eyes, for she could not bear to see her sister’s triumph, which robbed her of the man whom she had hoped to win; and in the awfulness of her jealous anger she trembled and turned white like an aspen in the wind. I think I have said somewhere of her that she reminded me of the sea on a calm day, having the same aspect of sleeping power about her. Well, it was all awake now, and, like the face of the furious ocean, it awed and yet fascinated me. A really handsome woman in a royal rage is always a beautiful sight, but such beauty and such a rage I never saw combined before; and I can only say that the effect produced was well worthy of the two.
She lifted her white face, the teeth set, and there were purple rings beneath her glowing eyes. Thrice she tried to speak, and thrice she failed, but at last her voice came. Raising her silver spear, she shook it, and the light glanced from it and from the golden scales of her cuirass.
“And thinkest thou, Nyleptha,” she said, in notes which pealed through the great hall like a clarion—“thinkest thou that I, a Queen of the Zu-Vendi, will brook that this base outlander shall sit upon my father’s throne and rear up half-breeds to fill the place of the great House of the Stairway? Never! never! while there is
