"It were unfitting," he said; "I shall take a lowlier seat." Then he drew a stool to him, and sat down before her, and said: "What aileth thee? What wouldest thou?"

Then she said: "Lord Earl, I am in prison; I would be free."

Quoth he: "Yea, and is this a prison, then?"

"Yea," she said, "since I may not so much as go out from it and come back again unthreatened; yet have I been, and that unseldom, in a worser prison than this: do thou go look on the Least Guard-chamber, and see if it be a meet dwelling for thy master's daughter."

He spake nought awhile; then he said: "And, yet if it grieveth thee, it marreth thee nought; for when I look on thee mine eyes behold the beauty of the world, and the body wherein is no lack."

She reddened and said: "If it be so, it is God's work, and I praise him therefor. But how long will it last? For grief slayeth beauty."

He looked on her long, and said: "To thy friends I betook thee, and I looked that they should cherish thee; where then is the wrong that I have done thee?"

She said: "Maybe no wrong wittingly; since now, belike, thou art come to tell me that all this weary sojourn is at an end, and that thou wilt take me to Meadhamstead, and set me on the throne there, and show my father's daughter to all the people."