heard from her lips.

"Tell her she may please herself," she said; "but that if she be not
here ere the hour, I'll come to her. I am not yet so sick that I cannot
crawl to the further end of the house. She'll not tarry to hear that
twice, or I err."

Amphillis locked the door behind her, as she was strictly ordered to do
whenever she left that room, unless Perrote were there, and finding Lady
Foljambe in her private boudoir, tremblingly delivered the more civil
half of her message. Lady Foljambe paid no heed to her.

"Dame," said poor Amphillis, "I pray you of mercy if I do ill; but her
Grace bade me say also that, if you came not to her afore the clock
should point the hour, then would she seek you."

Lady Foljambe allowed a word to escape her which could only be termed a
mild form of swearing--a sin to which women no less than men, and of all
classes, were fearfully addicted in the Middle Ages--and, without
another look at Amphillis, stalked upstairs, and let herself with her
own key into the Countess's chamber.

The Countess sat in her large chair of carved walnut, made easy by being
lined with large, soft cushions. There were no easy chairs of any other
kind. She was in her favourite place, near the window.

"Well, Avena, good morrow! Didst have half my message, or the whole?"

"I am here, Dame, to take your Grace's orders."

"I see, it wanted the whole. `To take my Grace's orders!' Soothly,
thou art pleasant. Well, take them, then. My Grace would like a couch
prepared on yonder lawn, and were I but well enough, a ride on
horseback; but I misdoubt rides be over for me. Go to: what is this I
hear touching the child Amphillis?--as though thou wentest about to be
rid of her."

"Dame, I have thought thereupon."

"What for? Now, Avena, I will know. Thou dost but lose thy pains to
fence with me."

In answer, Lady Foljambe told the story, with a good deal of angry
comment. The Countess was much amused, a fact which did not help to
calm the narrator.

"_Ha, jolife_!" said she, "but I would fain have been in thy bower when
the matter came forth! Howbeit, I lack further expounding thereanentis.
Whereof is Phyllis guilty?"

Lady Foljambe, whose wrath was not up at the white heat which it had
touched in the morning, found this question a little difficult to
answer. She could not reasonably find fault with Amphillis for being
Ricarda's cousin, and this was the real cause of her annoyance. The