Page:Across the Zodiac (Volume 2).djvu/87

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A Prince's Present.
77

had a motive she knew would satisfy me as fully as herself. When I learned what that motive was, I was greatly surprised at her unselfishness and courage. If you threw me your veil to save me from drowning, how would you feel if my first words to you were:—'No one must think I could not swim, therefore even the household must believe you, in unveiling, guilty of an unpardonable fault'? . . . Answer me, Eunane."

"I should let you sink next time," she replied, with a pretty half-dubious sauciness, showing that her worst fears at least were relieved.

"Quite right; but you are less generous than Eveena. To hide how I had acted on her advice, she would have had you suppose her guilty. That you might not laugh at my authority, and 'find a dragon in the esve's nest,' she would have had me treat her as guilty."

"But I deserved it. A girl has no right to break the seal in the master's absence," interposed Eveena, much more distressed than gratified by the vindication to which she was so well entitled.

"Let your tongue sleep, Eveena. So [with a kiss] I blot your first miscalculation, Eunane. Earth [the Evening Star of Mars] light your dreams."

It was with visible reluctance that Eveena followed me into the chamber we had last left; and she expostulated as earnestly as her obedience would permit against the fiat that assigned it to her.

"Choose what room you please, then," I said; "but understand that, so far as my will and my trust can make you, you are the mistress here."

"Well, then," she answered, "give me the little octagon beside your own:"—the smallest and simplest,