"Your Grace, a share of your seat I entreat," she said gaily, heedless of stern looks. "Nay! I'll die of laughing unless you let me read you this."
"Child! child!" admonished the Duchess, still trying to look severe, "this loud laughter is most unseemly--and your cheeks all ablaze! What is it now?"
"What is it, sweet Grace?" responded the young girl. "A poem! Listen!"
She smoothed out the piece of paper, spread it out upon her knee and began reading solemnly:--
"If all the world were sought so farre Who could find such a wight? Her beauty twinkleth like a starre Within the frosty night. Her roseall colour comes and goes With such a comely grace, More ruddier too than doth the rose, Within her lively face."
"And beneath this sonnet," she continued, "a drawing--see!--a heart pierced by a dagger. _His_ heart--_my_ beauty which twinkleth like a starre!"
Who could resist the joy and gladness, the freshness, the youth, the girlishness which emanated from Ursula's entire personality? The two other girls pressed closely round her, giggling like school-children at sight of the rough, sentimental device affixed to the love poem.
The Duchess vainly endeavoured to keep up a semblance of sternness, but she could not meet those laughing eyes, now dark, now blue, now an ever-changing grey, alive with irrepressible mischief, yet full of loving tenderness. She felt that her wrath would soon melt in the sunshine of that girlish smile.
"Lady Ursula, this is most unseemly," she said as coldly as she could. "How came you by this poem?"
Ursula threw her arms round the feebly-resisting old dame.
"Hush!" she whispered, "in your dear old ears! I found it, sweet Duchess . . . beside my stockings . . . when I came out of my bath!"
"Now, Duchess! dear, sweet, darling, beautiful Duchess, tell me, who think you wrote this poem? And who--_who_ think you placed it near my stockings?"
The Duchess was almost speechless, partly through genuine horror, but chiefly because a sweet, fresh face was pressed closely to her old cheek.
"'Twas not the Earl of Norfolk," continued Ursula meditatively. She seemed quite unconscious of the enormity of her offence, and sought the eyes of her young friends in confirmation of these various surmises. "He cannot write verses. Nor could it be my lord of Overcliffe, for he would not know where to find my stockings."