er Grace of England's low
spirits, and the discovery saved their imagination much toil.

There was something ungenerous in this, because the Lady Edith was
understood to be an orphan; and though she was called Plantagenet, and
the fair Maid of Anjou, and admitted by Richard to certain privileges
only granted to the royal family, and held her place in the circle
accordingly, yet few knew, and none acquainted with the Court of England
ventured to ask, in what exact degree of relationship she stood to
Coeur de Lion. She had come with Eleanor, the celebrated Queen Mother of
England, and joined Richard at Messina, as one of the ladies destined
to attend on Berengaria, whose nuptials then approached. Richard treated
his kinswoman with much respectful observance, and the Queen made her
her most constant attendant, and, even in despite of the petty jealousy
which we have observed, treated her, generally, with suitable respect.

The ladies of the household had, for a long time, no further advantage
over Edith than might be afforded by an opportunity of censuring a less
artfully disposed head attire or an unbecoming robe; for the lady was
judged to be inferior in these mysteries. The silent devotion of the
Scottish knight did not, indeed, pass unnoticed; his liveries, his
cognizances, his feats of arms, his mottoes and devices, were nearly
watched, and occasionally made the subject of a passing jest. But then
came the pilgrimage of the Queen and her ladies to Engaddi, a journey
which the Queen had undertaken under a vow for the recovery of her
husband's health, and which she had been encouraged to carry into effect
by the Archbishop of Tyre for a political purpose. It was then, and in
the chapel at that holy place, connected from above with a Carmelite
nunnery, from beneath with the cell of the anchorite, that one of the
Queen's attendants remarked that secret sign of intelligence which Edith
had made to her lover, and failed not instantly to communicate it to
her Majesty. The Queen returned from her pilgrimage enriched with this
admirable recipe against dullness or ennui; and her train was at
the same time augmented by a present of two wretched dwarfs from the
dethroned Queen of Jerusalem, as deformed and as crazy (the excellence
of that unhappy species) as any Queen could have desired. One of
Berengaria's idle amusements had been to try the effect of the sudden
appearance of such ghastly and fantastic forms on the nerves of the