d I
believe you are right."

"I am not infallible, my dear: but still--"

"Yes, you are perfectly right: it is not well for any married woman to
be known to possess any such robe. There is no telling, just as you say,
what people would be whispering about her, nor what disgraceful tricks
she would get the credit of playing on her husband."

"My daughter, I was only about to tell you--"

"Yes, and you put it quite unanswerably. For you, who have the name of
being the wisest Count that ever reigned in Provence, and the shrewdest
King that Arles has ever had, know perfectly well how people talk, and
how eager people are to talk, and to place the very worst construction
on everything: and you know, too, that husbands do not like such talk.
Certainly I had not thought of these things, my father, but I believe
that you are right."

Raymond Berenger stroked his thick short beard, and said: "Now truly, my
daughter, whether or not I be wise and shrewd--though, as you say, of
course there have been persons kind enough to consider--and in petitions
too--However, be that as it may, and putting aside the fact that
everybody likes to be appreciated, I must confess I can imagine no gift
which would at this high season be more acceptable to any husband than
the ashes of that robe."

"This is a saying," Alianora here declares, "well worthy of Raymond
Berenger: and I have often wondered at your striking way of putting
things."

"That, too, is a gift," the King-Count said, with proper modesty, "which
to some persons is given, and to others not: so I deserve no credit for
it. But, as I was saying when you interrupted me, my dear, it is well
for youth to have its fling, because (as I have often thought) we are
young only once: and so I have not ever criticized your jauntings in far
lands. But a husband is another pair of sandals. A husband does not like
to have his wife flying about the tree tops and the tall lonely
mountains and the low long marshes, with nobody to keep an eye on her,
and that is the truth of it. So, were I in your place, and wise enough
to listen to the old father who loves you, and who is wiser than you, my
dear--why, now that you are about to marry, I repeat to you with all
possible earnestness, my darling, I would destroy this feather and this
robe in one red fire, if only Count Manuel will agree to it. For it is
he who now has power over all your possessions, and not I."

"Count Manuel," says Alianora, with