"To serve your Excellency."
"Then be welcome, though I am sure that the trade you least
understand is that of a pastry-cook."
The kneeling man bowed his handsome head, and fetched a deep
sigh.
"If in the past I had better understood another trade, I should
not now be reduced to following this one."
She urged him now to rise, hereafter the entertainment between
them was very brief on that first occasion. He departed upon a
promise to come soon again, and the undertaking on her side to
procure for his shop the patronage of the convent.
Thereafter it became his custom to attend the morning Mass
celebrated by Frey Miguel in the convent chapel--which was open
to the public--and afterwards to seek the friar in the sacristy
and accompany him thence to the convent parlour, where the
Princess waited, usually with one or another of her attendant
nuns. These daily interviews were brief at first, but gradually
they lengthened until they came to consume the hours to dinner-
time, and presently even that did not suffice, and Sebastian must
come again later in the day.
And as the interviews increased and lengthened, so they grew also
in intimacy between the royal pair, and plans for Sebastian's
future came to be discussed.
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