air that shames the sun,
Whilst she must pick of all one man
And ever brood thereon--
And for no reason,
And not rightly,--

"Save that the plan was foreordained
(More old than Chalcedon,
Or any tower of Tarshish
Or of gleaming Babylon),
That she must love unwillingly
And love till life be done,--.
He for a season,
And more lightly."

So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a
retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord
Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.

"Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister is a very
handsome woman," was Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to
have been after supper, and the girl sat with Gregory Darrell in not the
most brilliant corner of the main hall.

The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a
tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. "The she-devil
designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what."

"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an
odd inconsequence: "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when
long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--"

"--Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper,
a lute!" And then he halloaed, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands
that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit."
Thus did the Queen begin her holiday.

It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting hand
tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not overpleased
at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in reason he well might
be, by the task assigned him.

"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should
sing--this song?"

"It is my will," the Countess said.

And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "A truth, once
spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, look you, of my
own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen Ysabeau herself were to
bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, for, Christ aid me! the song
is true."

Sang Sir Gregory:

"Dame Ysabeau, la prophecie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--"[4]

and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish;
the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and