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She smiled frankly at him. "Yes! I would like to dance before the King!" "Fie, fie, Pequita!" cried Johan Zegota, while murmurs of laughter and playful cries of 'Shame, Shame' echoed through the room. "Why not?" said Pequita; "It would do me good, and my father too!
What I do here is for my father's sake you know that!" "I know!" and Zouche smoked on, and shook his wild head sentimentally, murmuring in a sotto-voce: "What I do here, is for the need of gold, What I do there, is for sweet love's sake only; Love, ever timid there, doth here grow bold, And wins such triumph as but leaves me lonely!" "Is that yours?" said Pequita with a sudden smile.
Truly, a king has often been put to worse uses!" "I think," said Pasquin Leroy, "I could manage to get you a trial at the Royal Opera, Pequita! I know the manager." She looked up with a sudden blaze of light in her eyes, sprang towards him, dropped on one knee with an exquisite grace, and kissed his hand.
Pequita laughed again, and shook back her long curls defiantly. "Who is that cold woman with a face like a mask and the crown of diamonds, that sits beside the King?" It was Zouche's turn to laugh now, and he did so with a keen sense of enjoyment.
Meanwhile, Pequita, whose childish rage against the King for not noticing her dancing or applauding it, had been the trifling cause of the sudden volcanic eruption of the public mind, became more than ever the idol of the hour. The night after the riot, the Opera-house was crowded to suffocation, and the stage was covered with flowers.
Everyone does everything well, except poor Zouche!" Pequita ran up to him. "Good-night, dear Paul!" He stooped and kissed her gently. "Good-night, little one! If ever you show your twinkling feet at the Opera, you will be the 'fashion' and will you remember Paul then?" "Always always!" said Pequita tenderly; "Father and Lotys and I will always love you!" Zouche gave a short laugh.
Seeing he was silent, she repeated softly and with a half smile. "'Now'?" "Now," continued Leroy quickly, and in a half-whisper; "I do know you partly, but I must know you more! You will give me the chance to do that?" His look said more than his words, and her face grew paler than before. She turned from him to the child at her side "Pequita, are you very tired?"
Tell Pequita that I would not look at her, or applaud her dancing the other night, because I wished her to hate the King and to love Pasquin! but now you must ask her for me, to love them both!" Sholto bowed low, profoundly overcome. Was this the King against whom they had all been in league? this simple, unaffected man, who seemed so much at home and at one with them all?
At Cadiz he found work, and also something that sweetened work love! He married a pretty Spanish girl who adored him, and as often happens when lovers rejoice too much in their love she died after a year's happiness. Sholto is all alone in the world with the little child his Spanish wife left him, Pequita.
A handsome youth stared down upon her smiling, his eyes sleepily amorous, it was the elder of the King's two younger sons, Prince Rupert. She hated his expression, beautiful though his features were, and hated herself for having to dance before him. Poor little Pequita! It was her first experience of the insult a girl-child can be made to feel through the look of a budding young profligate.
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