e have already escaped hardly for
such a frolic."

"Escaped?" repeated the Queen scornfully. "Yet thou mayest be right,
Calista, in thy caution. Let this Nubian, as thou callest him, first do
his errand to our cousin--besides, he is mute too, is he not?"

"He is, gracious madam," answered the knight.

"Royal sport have these Eastern ladies," said Berengaria, "attended by
those before whom they may say anything, yet who can report nothing.
Whereas in our camp, as the Prelate of Saint Jude's is wont to say, a
bird of the air will carry the matter."

"Because," said De Neville, "your Grace forgets that you speak within
canvas walls."

The voices sunk on this observation, and after a little whispering, the
English knight again returned to the Ethiopian, and made him a sign
to follow. He did so, and Neville conducted him to a pavilion, pitched
somewhat apart from that of the Queen, for the accommodation, it seemed,
of the Lady Edith and her attendants. One of her Coptic maidens received
the message communicated by Sir Henry Neville, and in the space of a
very few minutes the Nubian was ushered into Edith's presence, while
Neville was left on the outside of the tent. The slave who introduced
him withdrew on a signal from her mistress, and it was with humiliation,
not of the posture only but of the very inmost soul, that the
unfortunate knight, thus strangely disguised, threw himself on one
knee, with looks bent on the ground and arms folded on his bosom, like a
criminal who expects his doom. Edith was clad in the same manner as
when she received King Richard, her long, transparent dark veil hanging
around her like the shade of a summer night on a beautiful landscape,
disguising and rendering obscure the beauties which it could not hide.
She held in her hand a silver lamp, fed with some aromatic spirit, which
burned with unusual brightness.

When Edith came within a step of the kneeling and motionless slave,
she held the light towards his face, as if to peruse his features more
attentively, then turned from him, and placed her lamp so as to throw
the shadow of his face in profile upon the curtain which hung beside.
She at length spoke in a voice composed, yet deeply sorrowful,

"Is it you? It is indeed you, brave Knight of the Leopard--gallant Sir
Kenneth of Scotland; is it indeed you?--thus servilely disguised--thus
surrounded by a hundred dangers."

At hearing the tones of his lady's voice thus unexpectedly addresse