hat she would have cast her joint-stool at me,
had she not been sitting on 't, and my lady's head against her knee. So
she called me a "zany," and then after a little a "toad," but went on
stroking my lady's hair.

And, by-and-by, back we come to his lordship.

"'Tis not alone his bloody tricks and murderous ways," quoth my wife,
"that causes all Christian folk to abhor him, but he consorts with no
other women than drabs and callets. Dost excuse that?"

"Nay," said I, with sufficient gravity, "then is this earl no longer a
man, but a swine, and not fit for men's discussion, much less that of
women."

At this reproof I saw anger again in her eye, but she was so pleased
withal at having got me to call Lord Denbeigh a swine that she forebore
any further personal affront.

"And yet," she went on, "they do say he be as fine a man as a wench
will walk through the rain to glimpse at, and a brave and a learned; but
that he wed a Spanish maid, and she betrayed him, and so he hath vowed
to hate women, one and all."

"Hast thou seen him?"

"Nay, but I've had him itemized to me by the wife o' Humfrey Lemon. A
blue eye, a hooked nose, a--"

"Well, well, wife," quoth I, "if a blue eye and a hooked nose be as bad
signs in a man as they be in a horse, methinks this thy villain is a
very round villain."

"And so he is," affirmed she.

"Yet," said I, "there is somewhere in me a something that doth pity
him."

"By my troth!" cried my wife. "I do believe, Master Butter, that
thou'dst pity the Devil's wife in childbirth."

"Ay, that I would!" I made answer, with a great calmness, for I saw that
she sought to rouse my spleen.

"Well, do not bellow," blurted she, "for my mistress is as sound as a
gold-piece."

Then quoth my lady, a-rising up on her elbow,

"Nay, that she is not. And, moreover, she would hear all the stories
concerning this bad and bloody Lord of Denbeigh!"

II.

When Marian heard my lady so speak, methought she would have swooned in
verity; for she knew my lady's contempt for gossip. E'en for the first
time in all her life, Marian could not find a word to her tongue.

"La! my lady," said she, and then stopped and was silent. My lady
laughed at her, with her deep eyes; but as was her wont, her mouth was
wondrous solemn.

"Ay, nurse," quoth she, "thou thought'st me safe i' th' Land o' Nod, but
one hath ears to hear there as elsewhere." Then she reaches out one
hand and plays with Marian's ruff. "Go