inner and due service done to the master, the old squire having heard
that Katherine--Conrad--is of Brabant, naturally introduces her
countryman Gerard to her. He does not in the least recognise her, and
what strikes her as stranger, neither during their own dinner nor after
says a word about Brabant itself. Conrad is regularly admitted to
Monseigneur's service, and, as a countryman, is to share Gerard's room.
They are perfectly good friends, go to see their horses together, etc.,
but still the formerly passionate lover says not a word of Brabant or
his Brabanconian love, and poor Katherine concludes that she has been
"put with forgotten sins"--not a bad phrase, though it might be
misconstrued. Being, however, as has been already seen, both a plucky
girl and a clever one, she determines to carry her part through. At
last, when they go to their respective couches in the same chamber, she
herself faces the subject, and asks him if he knows any persons in
Brabant. "Oh yes." "Does he know" her own father, his former master?
"Yes." "They say," said she, "that there are pretty girls there: did you
not know any?" "Precious few," quoth he, "and I cared nothing about
them. Do let me go to sleep! I am dead tired." "What!" said she, "can
you sleep when there is talk of pretty girls? _You_ are not much of a
lover." But he slept "like a pig."

Nevertheless, Katherine does not give up hope, though the next day
things are much the same, Gerard talking of nothing but hounds and
hawks, Conrad of pretty girls. At last the visitor declares that he
[she] does not care for the Barrois, and will go back to Brabant. "Why?"
says Gerard, "what better hunting, etc., can you get there than here?"
"It has nothing," says Conrad, "like the women of Brabant," adding, in
reply to a jest of his, an ambiguous declaration that she is actually in
love. "Then why did you leave her?" says Gerard--about the first
sensible word he has uttered. She makes a fiery answer as to Love
sometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for the
time the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, and
some small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as she
keeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" the
sluggard to some extent. "Has not _he_ been in love, and does not he
know all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he is
sure that Conrad's lady is not such either." Another try, and she gets
th