Millicent clasped her to her bosom in a transport of joy, while
Eustace exclaimed:
'The little maid is right; most deeply right. That which truly
matters can never be taken away.'
Then Millicent raised her eyes to him and said, with quivering lip:
'I had so greatly dreaded this moment. I owe it to you, my lord,
that she has come to me thus.'
Before he could answer Emilia had seen the golden flowers in her
mother's hand, and with a childish shriek of ecstasy had claimed
them, while Millicent said:
'I had culled them for thee, sweetheart.'
'I'll give some to my lord!' cried the child. 'My lord loves king-
cups.'
'Yes,' said Eustace, taking the flowers and kissing the child, but
with his eyes on her mother's all the time; 'I have loved king-cups
ever since on May day when there was a boat going down the river to
Richmond.'
Her eyes fell, and that strange trembling came round her mouth. For,
as I learned afterwards from my sister, it was then that they had
danced in Richmond Park, and he had made a crown of king-cups and set
it on her flaxen hair, and then and there it was that love had first
begun between those two, whom ten years had so strangely changed.
But Eustace said no more, except to tell me that he had come to ask
if I could be ready to return to Paris the second day ensuing, as Sir
Edward Hyde was going, and had a pass by which we could all together
go through the Spanish Netherlands without taking ship.
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