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You shall have a pleasanter memory of my going than Mistress Barbara's gave you." "How shall I find you when I come to town?" "Why, if you will ask any gentleman you meet whether he chances to remember Cydaria, you will find me as soon as it is well you should." I prayed her to tell me more; but she was resolved to tell no more. "See, it is late. I go," said she. Then suddenly she came near to me.
The sight of the gardener's cottage sent my thoughts back to the old days when Cydaria came and caught my heart in her butterfly net. It was just there, in the meadow by the avenue, that I had kissed her. A kiss is a thing lightly given and sometimes lightly taken. It was that kiss which Barbara had seen from the window, and great debate had arisen on it.
I put him off by a story of a friend who wished to remain unnamed, and, after the feint of some indifferent talk, seized the chance of a short silence to ask him my great question. "Pray, sir, have you ever heard of a lady who goes sometimes by the name of Cydaria?" said I. I fear my cheek flushed a little, do what I could to check such an exhibition of rawness. "Cydaria?
Yet still my desire was to learn of Cydaria, for even now I could hardly believe what Darrell told me.
What cared I? By Heaven, why was one man a nobleman and rich, while another had no money in his purse and but one change to his back? Was not love all in all, and why did Cydaria laugh at a truth so manifest?
The fairest sights may sometimes come amiss. "Cydaria! A fine name!" said Barbara, with curling lip. "I'll wager she has reasons for giving no other." "Her mother gives another to the gardener," I reminded her meekly. "Names are as easy given as as kisses!" she retorted. "As for Cydaria, my lord says it is a name out of a play."
"When did a poet ask two names to head his sonnet? And surely you wanted mine for a sonnet?" "So be it, Cydaria," said I. "So be it, Simon. And is not Cydaria as pretty as Barbaria?" "It has a strange sound," said I, "but it's well enough." "And now the nosegay!" "I must pay a reckoning for this," I sighed; but since a bargain is a bargain I gave her the nosegay.
All this while we had stood at the window, watching Cydaria's light feet trip across the meadow, and her bonnet swing wantonly in her hand. But now Cydaria disappeared among the trunks of the beech trees. "See, she has gone," said I in a whisper. "She is gone, Mistress Barbara." Barbara understood what I would say, but she was resolved to show me no gentleness.
I had no such friends, and the King had proved before now that he could forget many a better friend to the throne than my dear father's open mind had made of him. "We must wait, we must wait still," said the Vicar. "Time will find a friend." Cydaria had become pensive for a moment, but she looked up now, smiling again, and said to me: "You'll soon have a friend in London."
"What, I I go I leave the town I leave the Court? And you? You're here to seek your fortune!" "Mayn't I dream that I've found it?" And again I caught her hand. After a moment she drew nearer to me; I felt her fingers press mine in tenderness. "Poor Simon!" said she with a little laugh. "Indeed he remembers Cydaria well. But Cydaria, such as she was, even Cydaria is gone. And now I am not she."
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