31

Mary

Why did he not write to me? He sent me jewels, but no letters! A smiling Ambassador Renard knelt and laid them one by one in the lap of my plum and gold brocade gown.

There was a dainty gold filigree necklace, as lacy and delicate as a cobweb, set with eighteen twinkling diamond brilliants, and a great table diamond as big as my thumb, and hanging below it, a large white teardrop pearl known as “La Peregrina,” “The Wanderer,” because it had traveled first from the Americas, and then to Spain, and now to England to be my bridal gift, but . . . no letter.

“No letter,” I said mournfully as the tears began to flow, “when a few tender words written in his own hand would be worth more to me than all the jewels in Christendom!”

“But, Madame,” Ambassador Renard said, “His Highness thinks a message carried from one set of lips to another is much more romantic than words written upon a page, thus he bade me tell you that these are the most lovely pair of gems in the world, barring two others—your eyes!”

“Oh! How romantic!” My heart melted like butter inside my breast. “Did he really say that?”

“Madame, having seen your eyes and how they shine with the love that fills your heart, I know exactly what he meant,” Ambassador Renard gallantly asserted as I clasped my beloved’s gifts to my galloping heart and lay back, almost swooning, against the soft cushions of my chair. I glanced over at Prince Philip’s portrait and impulsively held out my arms to it and in a breathless whisper sighed, “Come to me, my beloved!”