h, they crowded
her audience-chamber, proud and insolent, humble or crafty, eyeing each
other with high looks, each prepared to slay his rival if the need
arose.

At last there came an earl who, as he came up the street at the head of
a large company of knights, seemed to shine like the sun. For his
armour was all of gold, and jewels were about his neck, and on his
girdle and his wrists. Every toss of his destrier's head dazzled the
eyes with the fountain of flashing lights given off by the jewels which
adorned the cloth of gold about its head.

This knight called himself the Earl of Drood, but Elined was in the
crowd of gaping townspeople that saw him enter, and she knew him for
the old insolent lover of her mistress, whom the countess had ever
despised, Sir Dewin of Castle Cower.

Sir Dewin disguised himself so that the countess did not know him. She
received him in audience, and though she was startled by the
magnificence of his dress, and a little moved by the gentleness of his
manner, she felt that she feared and distrusted him.

The next day he craved to see her again, and then said:

'Fair and noble lady, so deeply doth thy beauty move me, that I am
eager to put to the test swiftly the question whether I or some other
happier knight among these noble gentlemen shall obtain thy hand.
Therefore I crave permission of thee to proclaim a joust between all
these knights that sue for thee, and the winner among them all shall be
he that thou shalt wed.'

'Sir,' said the countess with great dignity, 'it is not for thee to
order here, but for me. I wish nothing to be done for the space of nine
days, and then will I make my choice.'

At which Sir Dewin, though full of rage, must needs seem content. And
the countess hoped that, in the space she had named, Elined would have
returned with the knight of her choice, and she herself could choose
him for her lord, if she thought he was the man whom she could most
trust and love.

But Sir Dewin wrought upon many of the suitors who were of his mind,
and they resolved that, will she, nill she, the countess must needs
abide by a contest between all her wooers to be holden on the tenth
day.

And on the tenth day all the knights, barons, and earls met together in
full armour in a broad green jousting-place beneath the windows of the
countess, and having made the rules of contest, and committed them to
the seneschal of the countess, they prepared to prove which among them
al