Before one of these, to whom Donna Laura swept
successive curtsies in advancing, the frightened cavaliere found himself
dragged with his sword between his legs. He ducked his head like the old
drake diving for worms in the puddle at the farm, and when at last he
dared look up, it was to see an odd sallow face, half-smothered in an
immense wig, bowing back at him with infinite ceremony--and Odo's heart
sank to think that this was his sovereign.
The Duke was in fact a sickly narrow-faced young man with thick
obstinate lips and a slight lameness that made his walk ungainly; but
though no way resembling the ermine-cloaked king of the chapel at
Pontesordo, he yet knew how to put on a certain majesty with his state
wig and his orders. As for the newly married Duchess, who sat at the
other end of the cabinet caressing a toy spaniel, she was scant fourteen
and looked a mere child in her great hoop and jewelled stomacher. Her
wonderful fair hair, drawn over a cushion and lightly powdered, was
twisted with pearls and roses, and her cheeks excessively rouged, in the
French fashion; so that as she arose on the approach of the visitors she
looked to Odo for all the world like the wooden Virgin hung with votive
offerings in the parish church at Pontesordo. Though they were but three
months married the Duke, it was rumoured, was never with her, preferring
the company of the young Marquess of Cerveno, his cousin and
heir-presumptive, a pale boy scented with musk and painted like a
comedian, whom his Highness would never suffer away from him and who now
leaned with an impertinent air against the back of the ducal armchair.
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