n by some other. Verily, I marvel she
would see him!"

"Do you so?" saith Dame Joan in that low quiet voice. "So do not I.
She will see him yet again, or I mistake much."

"_Ha, chetife_!" I made answer. "It is full well we be on our road
back to Paris, for there at least will he not dare to come."

"Not dare?"

"Surely not, for the King of France, which himself hath banished him,
should never suffer it."

Dame Joan helped herself to a roasted plover with a smile. When the
sewer was gone, quoth she--

"I think, Dame Cicely, you know full little whether of Sir Roger de
Mortimer or of the King of France. For the last, he is as easily
blinded a man as you may lightly see; and if our Queen his sister told
him black was white, he should but suppose that she saw better than he.
And for the other--is there aught in all this world, whether as to
bravery or as to wickedness, that Sir Roger de Mortimer would _not_
dare?"

"Dear heart!" cried I. "I made account we had done with men of that
order."

"You did?" Dame Joan's tone, and the somewhat dry smile which went with
it, said full plainly, "In no wise."

"Well, soothly we had enough and to spare!" quoth I. "There was my Lord
of Lancaster--God rest his soul!--and Sir Piers de Gavaston (if he were
as ill man as some said)."

"He was not a saint, I think," she said: "yet could I name far worser
men than he."

"And my sometime Lord of Warwick," said I, "was no saint likewise, or I
mistake."

"Therein," saith she, "have you the right."

"Well," pursued I, "all they be gone: and soothly, I had hoped there
were no more such left."

"Then should there be no original sin left," she made answer; "yea, and
Sathanas should be clean gone forth of this world."

The rest of the converse I mind not, but that last sentence tarried in
my mind for many a day, and hath oft-times come back to me touching
other matters.

We reached Loure on Saint Martin's Day [November 11th], and Paris the
next morrow. There found we the Bishops of Winchester and Exeter,
[Stratford and Stapleton], whom King Edward had sent over to join the
Queen's Council. Now I never loved overmuch neither of these Reverend
Fathers, though it were for very diverse causes. Of course, being
priests, they were holy men; but I misdoubt if either were perfect man
apart from his priesthood--my Lord of Winchester more in especial.
Against my Lord of Exeter have I but little to say; he was fumish
[irritab