regory?"

His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy
is destroyed, and the world lies under a blight wherefrom God has
averted an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons
existent I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I
partake of life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him
austerely kind who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead."

She shrugged, although but wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a
Planh," the Queen observed; "_benedicite!_ it was ever your way, my
friend, to love a woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she
began to sing, as they rode through Baverstock Thicket.

Sang Ysabeau:

"_Man's love hath many prompters,
But a woman's love hath none;
And he may woo a nimble wit
Or hair that shames the sun,
Whilst she must pick of all one man
And ever brood thereon--
And for no reason,
And not rightly,--_

"_Save that the plan was foreordained
(More old than Chalcedon,
Or any tower of Tarshish
Or of gleaming Babylon),
That she must love unwillingly
And love till life be done,
He for a season,
And more lightly._"

So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a
retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell.
Lord Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.

"And the more for that your sister is a very handsome woman," was
Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to have been after
supper, and she sat with Gregory Darrell in not the most brilliant
corner of the main hall.

The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a
sudden splurge of speech informed her of the sorry masquerade. "The
she-devil designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know
not what."

"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an
odd inconsequence. "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when
long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--"

"Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper,
a lute!" And then he halloaed, more lately, "Gregory, Madame de
Farrington demands that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during
your last visit."

Thus did the Queen begin her holiday.

It was a handsome couple which came forward, hand quitting hand a shade
too tardily, and the blinking eyes yet rapt; but these two were not