n
anger. "Pearls! can all the pearls of the East atone for a speck upon
England's honour--all the tears that ever woman's eye wept wash away a
stain on Richard's fame? Go to, madam, know your place, and your time,
and your sphere. At present we have duties in which you cannot be our
partner."

"Thou hearest, Edith," whispered the Queen; "we shall but incense him."

"Be it so," said Edith, stepping forward.--"My lord, I, your poor
kinswoman, crave you for justice rather than mercy; and to the cry of
justice the ears of a monarch should be open at every time, place, and
circumstance."

"Ha! our cousin Edith?" said Richard, rising and sitting upright on
the side of his couch, covered with his long camiscia. "She speaks
ever kinglike, and kinglike will I answer her, so she bring no request
unworthy herself or me."

The beauty of Edith was of a more intellectual and less voluptuous
cast than that of the Queen; but impatience and anxiety had given
her countenance a glow which it sometimes wanted, and her mien had a
character of energetic dignity that imposed silence for a moment even
on Richard himself, who, to judge by his looks, would willingly have
interrupted her.

"My lord," she said, "this good knight, whose blood you are about to
spill, hath done, in his time, service to Christendom. He has fallen
from his duty through a snare set for him in mere folly and idleness of
spirit. A message sent to him in the name of one who--why should I not
speak it?--it was in my own--induced him for an instant to leave his
post. And what knight in the Christian camp might not have thus far
transgressed at command of a maiden, who, poor howsoever in other
qualities, hath yet the blood of Plantagenet in her veins?"

"And you saw him, then, cousin?" replied the King, biting his lips to
keep down his passion.

"I did, my liege," said Edith. "It is no time to explain wherefore. I am
here neither to exculpate myself nor to blame others."

"And where did you do him such a grace?"

"In the tent of her Majesty the Queen."

"Of our royal consort!" said Richard. "Now by Heaven, by Saint George
of England, and every other saint that treads its crystal floor, this
is too audacious! I have noticed and overlooked this warrior's insolent
admiration of one so far above him, and I grudged him not that one of
my blood should shed from her high-born sphere such influence as the
sun bestows on the world beneath. But, heaven and earth! that you