ed--among the servants in the hall, the same old
woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she
descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on
his black horse.

"The Devil!" he exclaimed--"what are you here for? 'Tis not time for
another wench upstairs, surely?"

"'Tis not time," answered the old nurse acidly, taking her tone from his
own. "But there is one, but an hour old, and my lady--"

"Be damned to her!" quoth Sir Jeoffry savagely. "A ninth one--and 'tis
nine too many. 'Tis more than man can bear. She does it but to spite
me."

"'Tis ill treatment for a gentleman who wants an heir," the old woman
answered, as disrespectful of his spouse as he was, being a time-serving
crone, and knowing that it paid but poorly to coddle women who did not as
their husbands would have them in the way of offspring. "It should have
been a fine boy, but it is not, and my lady--"

"Damn her puling tricks!" said Sir Jeoffry again, pulling at his horse's
bit until the beast reared.

"She would not let me rest until I came to you," said the nurse
resentfully. "She would have you told that she felt strangely, and
before you went forth would have a word with you."

"I cannot come, and am not in the mood for it if I could," was his
answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time she
hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she--but nine is
more than I have patience for."

"She is light-headed, mayhap," said the nurse. "She lieth huddled in a
heap, staring and muttering, and she would leave me no peace till I
promised to say to you, 'For the sake of poor little Daphne, whom you
will sure remember.' She pinched my hand and said it again and again."

Sir Jeoffry dragged at his horse's mouth and swore again.

"She was fifteen then, and had not given me nine yellow-faced wenches,"
he said. "Tell her I had gone a-hunting and you were too late;" and he
struck his big black beast with the whip, and it bounded away with him,
hounds and huntsmen and fellow-roysterers galloping after, his guests,
who had caught at the reason of his wrath, grinning as they rode.

* * * * *

In a huge chamber hung with tattered tapestries and barely set forth with
cumbersome pieces of furnishing, my lady lay in a gloomy, canopied bed,
with her new-born child at her side, but not looking at or touching it,
seeming rather to have withdrawn herself from the pillow on which it l