Yet still he did not move, but, instead, stood there looking like some great black statue in his long cloak and mask, and with his head bent towards the ground, so that I concluded he knew not what to do, but, in his pride and rage, was determined not to quit the ground at her orders.
And she, seeing this, and, as she told me afterwards, understanding very well the tempest that must be raging in his heart, said, "Come, Adrian. Since he will not go, we must."
Wherefore we went back to her house followed by Giles, and leaving the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria still standing in the open space before the little door.
Now the story is done—done, that is, unless you would desire me to tell you what you doubtless can very well imagine; namely, that it was not long before the Princess and I became man and wife. Yet hard enough that marriage was in making, I can assure you, and one which I thought would never be completed. For, although my girl, having once acknowledged that she loved me, was as willing to be my wife as I was eager to have her, the forms and ceremonies we had to go through to get what Giles called "triced up" were enough to irritate one of Damaris's own saints; for there was the Consul of Spain—the Consul of the, by her, hated Philip V.—to be invoked, and the English ambassador to be consulted, who, since he represented King George, was not agreeable to me; and the permission of the Archbishop of Lyons, Primate of France, to be obtained, and a permission sent over from England from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of my church. And we went through all kinds of ceremonies, and were half-married a week before we were finally allowed to consider ourselves man and wife, while I became very irritable through it all, and Damaris muttered all kinds of strange little expletives in Spanish through her pretty teeth and scarlet lips, which, she told me afterwards, would not have sounded so nicely in English. Also, I should not forget to say that Giles signed countless papers and parchments as a witness, and looked very important over it all, and whispered lines of love-ballads to me at intervals to cheer me up, and ate enormously at every opportunity which offered.
However, done it was at last, and we were wedded. And, although my wife could not take me to any of her great possessions because she would not set foot in Spain while Philip ruled, and I could not take her to my home in Staffordshire (where the Trent rises) because of my political principles, we were very well content—since we were both young and hopeful!—and so we settled down in the old Paris house of the Carbajals in the Marais, and have, up to now, lived happy ever after, as the chapbooks say; a happiness which, you may be very sure, was not ruffled when we heard that the Prince of Csaba and Miranda Vitoria had married a princess of the ancient house of Ponte-Casoria (which is allied to the greater house of Bourbon), who was extremely rich, but as wizened as a monkey (as my wife told me), and who, report declared, led Csaba a terrible life.