ain hope; she knew what she knew, though no other
even guessed it. With that to carry she could lift up her head. No woman
in the world need grudge the usurper of place while she may go on,
carrying her title below the heart. More of this presently. Two hours
before noon, in that clear October weather, over the brown hills came a
company of knights on white destriers, with their pennons flying and
white cloaks over their mail, the outriders of Navarre. They were met
in the meadow of the Charterhouse and escorted to their quarters, which
were on the right of the King's pavilion. That same pavilion was of
purple silk, worked over with gold leopards the size of life. It had two
standards beside it, the dragon of the English, the leopards of Anjou.
The pavilion of King Sancho was of green silk with silver emblems--a
heart, a castle, a stag; Saint George, Saint Michael, Saint James the
Great, and Saint Martin with his split cloak--a shining place before
whose door stood twenty ladies in white, their hair let loose, to
receive Madame Berengere and minister to her. Chief among these was
Countess Jehane. King Richard was not in his own pavilion, but would
greet his brother king in the hail of the citadel.

So in due time, after three soundings on the silver trumpets and much
curious ceremony of bread and salt, came Don Sancho the Wise in a meinie
of his peers, very noble on a roan horse; and Dame Berengere his
daughter in a wine-coloured litter, with her ladies about her on ambling
palfreys, the colour of burnt grass. When they took this little princess
out of her silken cage the first face she looked for and the first she
saw was that of Jehane Saint-Pol, who received her courteously.

Jehane always wore sumptuous clothing, being aware, no doubt, that her
person justified the display. For this time she had dressed herself in
silver brocade, let her bosom go bare, and brought the strong golden
plaits round about in her favourite fashion. Upon her head she had a
coronet of silver flowers, in her neck a blue jewel. All the colour she
had lay in her hue of faint rose, in her hair like corn in the sun, in
her eyes of green, in her deep red lips. But her height, free build, and
liberal curves marked her out of a bevy that glowed in a more Southern
fashion. She had to stoop overmuch to kiss Berengere's hand; and this
made the little Spaniard bite her lip.

Berengere herself was like a bell, in a stiff dress of crimson sewn with
gre