er twitched his beard and demanded if the fact that Ellinor
had been a married woman these ten years past was not an obstacle to
the plan which his fair cousin had proposed?

Here the Prince was accoutred cap-a-pie, and in consequence hauled out
a paper. Dating from Viterbo, Clement, Bishop of Rome, servant to the
servants of God, desirous of all health and apostolical blessing for
his well-beloved son in Christ, stated that a compact between a boy of
fifteen and a girl of ten was an affair of no particular moment; and
that in consideration of the covenanters never having clapped eyes upon
each other since the wedding-day--even had not the precontract of
marriage between the groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a
consummation of the childish oath an obvious and a most heinous
enormity--why, that, in a sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the
new pontiff was perfectly amenable to reason.

So in a month it was settled. Alphonso would give his sister to de
Gatinais, and in exchange get the latter's vote; and Gui Foulques of
Sabionetta--now Clement, fourth Pope to assume that name--would annul
the previous marriage, they planned, and in exchange get an armament to
serve him against Manfred, the late and troublesome tyrant of Sicily
and Apulia. The scheme promised to each one of them that which he in
particular desired, and messengers were presently sent into Ponthieu.

It is now time we put aside these Castilian matters and speak of other
things. In England, Prince Edward had fought, and won, a shrewd battle
at Evesham; the barons' power was demolished, there would be no more
internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed idleness, he began to
think of the foreign girl he had not seen since the day he wedded her.
She would be a woman by this, and it was befitting that he claim his
wife. He rode with Hawise d'Ebernoe to Ambresbury, and at the gate of
the nunnery they parted, with what agonies are immaterial to this
history's progression; the tale merely tells that latterly the Prince
went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at adventure as he loved to do,
and thus came to Entrechat, where his wife resided with her mother, the
Countess Johane.

In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, four in
number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as they told
him) drank about a great stone which served them for a table. Being
thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality