What
his would bring to him, or bring him to, he knew not in the least, and
had at times a pang at thought of it, but sometimes such a surge of joy
as made him feel himself twice man instead of once.
When he went forth to ride the next day it was with a purpose clear in
his mind. Hitherto all he had seen or heard had been by chance, but if
he saw aught this morning 'twould be because he had hoped for and gone
to meet it.
"Before I cross the sea," was his thought, "I would see her once again
if chance so favors me. I would see if there seems any new thing in her
face, and if there is--if this is no wild jest and comedy, but means
that she has wakened to knowing herself a woman--I shall know when I
see her eyes and can carry my thought away with me. Then when I come
back--'twill be but a few months at the most--I will ride into
Gloucestershire the first week I am on English soil, and I will go to
her and ask that I may be her servant until she learns what manner of
man I am and can tell me to go--or stay."
If Sir Jeoffry and his crew had dreamed that such a thought worked in
the mind of one of the richest young noblemen in England--he a Duke and
handsome enough to set any woman's heart beating--as he rode through
the Gloucestershire lanes; if they had dreamed that such a thing was
within the bounds of human possibility, what a tumult would have been
roused among them; how they would have stared at each other, with
mouths open, uttering exclamatory oaths of wild amazement and ecstatic
triumph; how they would have exulted and drunk each other's healths
and their wild playmate's and her splendid fortunes.
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