you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered
it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death
warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were
rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their
contriver. Yet the minstrel added a new peroration.

Sang Sir Gregory:

"Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gemit--
Peu pense a ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,
Et d'une fille--et la vois si--
Et grandement suis esbahi."

And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without
speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught
between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her.
She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the
buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments from her, and resting the
dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit
of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon.

"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last,
"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau."

"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude!
since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been
no such miracle recorded."

"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges a
master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. My brother, I do
not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows you sing with the voice
of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song all
through as I have heard it, and then had said--for she is not as the run
of women--'Messire, I had thought until this that there was no thorough
man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and--I
remember. Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may
love no woman, and rule me, messire, since I find even in your
cruelty--For we are no pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe
and all the ancient gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that
lies Asia, too, and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt
Tartary, where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to
receive the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I." She
paused. She shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as the run of
women, had said this much, my brother?"

Darrell was more pallid (as th