l add no more. The responsibility lies now with you.
My message is delivered, and I pray God to give you ears to hear."

"Sir Godfrey Foljambe, is this the manner in which you think it meet
that one of your household should address a Prince?"

"Most gracious Lord, I am deeply distressed that this gentlewoman should
so far have forgotten herself. But I humbly pray your Grace to remember
that she is but a woman; and women have small wit and much
spitefulness."

"In good sooth, I have need to remember it!" answered the Duke,
wrathfully. "I never thought, when I put myself to the pains to journey
over half England to satisfy the fancies of a sick woman, that I was to
be received with insult and contumely after this fashion. I pray you to
send this creature out of my sight, as the least reparation that can be
offered for such an injury."

"You need not, Sir," was the immediate reply of Perrote. "I go, for
mine errand is done. And for the rest, may God judge between us, and He
will."

The Duke sat down to the collation hastily spread before him, with the
air of an exceedingly injured man. He would not have been quite so
angry, if his own conscience had not been so provoking as to second
every word of Perrote's reprimand. And as it is never of the least use
for a man to quarrel with his conscience, he could do nothing but make
Perrote the scape-goat, unless, indeed, he had possessed sufficient
grace and humility to accept and profit by the rebuke:--which in his
eyes, was completely out of the question. Had the Archbishop of York
been the speaker, he might possibly have condescended so far. But the
whims of an old nurse--a subject--a woman--he told himself, must needs
be utterly beneath the notice of any one so exalted. The excellence of
the medicine offered him could not even be considered, if it were
presented in a vessel of common pottery, chipped at the edges.

Notwithstanding his wrath, the Duke did sufficient justice to the
collation; and he then demanded, if it must be, to be taken to his
mother at once. The sooner the ordeal was over, the better, and he did
not mean to remain at Hazelwood an hour longer than could be helped.

Lady Foljambe went up to prepare the Countess for the interview. In her
chamber she found not only Amphillis, who was on duty, but the
Archbishop also. He sat by the bed with the book of the Gospels in his
hands--a Latin version, of course--from which he had been translating a