er
husband's adherent. "Death!" croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right
hand, and, "Young de Spencer's death!" amended the Earl of March, with
wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her great chair--a handsome
woman, stoutening now from gluttony and from too much wine,--and
regarded her prisoner with lazy amiability.

"And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?" she demanded--"or are you
mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that you dare ride past my gates alone?"

He curtly said, "I rode for Ordish."

Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, "give me the paper which I
would not sign."

The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London
somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and
epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, with a
great scrawling flourish.

"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau.
She pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March. "So! get
it over with, that necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And
do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner."

Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair,
considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the
point of shameful death. There was in the room a little dog which had
come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the
soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of
your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?"

The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out
of England,--and in reason I might not leave England without seeing the
desire of my heart."

"My friend," said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned
anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and
all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world
also! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen:
I, too, must ride with you to Ordish--as your sister, say--Gregory, did
I not hang, last April, the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de
Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As
his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to
none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate
Rosamund, any hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear
according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me
to encounter--th