h the Duke of Brabant, though he be her first cousin, her godson, and
a mere rude boy. I cannot tell you how evil were the days we often had
then. If he had been left to himself, Madame might have guided him; but
ill men came about him; they maddened him with wine and beer; they
excited him to show that he feared her not; he struck her, and more than
once almost put her in danger of her life. Then, too, his mother married
the Bishop of Liege, her enemy--

'The Bishop!'

'He had never been consecrated, and had a dispensation. That marriage
deprived my poor lady of even her mother's help. All were against her
then; and for me too it went ill, for the Duke of Burgundy insisted on my
being given to a half-brother of his, one they call Sir Boemond of
Burgundy--a hard man of blood and revelry. The Duke of Brabant was all
for him, and so was the Duchess-mother; and though my uncles would not
have chosen him, yet they durst not withstand the Duke of Burgundy. I
tried to appeal to the Emperor Sigismund, the head of our house, but I
know not if he ever heard of my petition. I was in an exceeding strait,
and had only one trust, namely, that Father Thomas had told me that the
more I threw myself upon God, the more He would save me from man. But
oh! they seemed all closing in on me, and I knew that Sir Boemond had
sworn that I should pay heavily for my resistance. Then one night my
Countess came to me. She showed me the bruises her lord had left on her
arms, and told me that he was about to banish all of us, her ladies, into
Holland, and to keep her alone to bear his fury, and she was resolved to
escape, and would I come with her? It seemed to me the message of
deliverance. Her nurse brought us peasant dresses, high stiff caps,
black boddices, petticoats of many colours, and therein we dressed
ourselves, and stole out, ere dawn, to a church, where we knelt till the
Sieur d'Escaillon--the gentleman who attends Madame still--drove up in a
farmer's garb, with a market cart, and so forth from Bruges we drove. We
cause to Valenciennes, to her mother; but we found that she, by
persuasion of the Duke, would give us both up; so the Sieur d'Escaillon
got together sixty lances, and therewith we rode to Calais, where never
were weary travellers more courteously received than we by Lord
Northumberland, the captain of Calais.'

'Oh, I am glad you came to us English!' cried Alice. 'Only I would it
had been my father who welcomed