[Footnote 5: In many countries, the distinction of station, if not of birth, was very strictly enforced, especially at meals; and I think it is Meyrick who mentions the ordonnance of some foreign prince, by which no one was permitted, under the grade of chivalry, to sit at the table with a knight, unless he were a cross-bowman, the son of a knight.] --------------------- There was one saturnine man, indeed, seated somewhat far down the table, with his head bent over his platter, who seemed to take little share in the hilarity of the others. From time to time he gave a side-long look towards Ella; but it was evidently not one of love or admiration; and Richard of Woodville was easily led to imagine that the good brother was somewhat scandalized at the presence of a woman in the convent. He asked the questor, who sat next to him, however, in a low voice, who that silent brother was; and it needed no farther explanation to make the monk understand whom he meant. "He is a Kill-joy," replied the questor, with a significant look; "but he is none of our own people, though one of the order, from the abbey at Liege. He departs soon, God be praised; for he has done nothing but censure us since he came hither. His abbot sent him away upon a visitation--to get rid of him, I believe; for he was unruly there, too, and declared that widgeons could not be eaten on even an ordinary fast-day without sin, though we all know the contrary." "He is not orthodox in that, at least," answered Richard of Woodville, with a smile. "Doubtless he thinks it highly improper for a lady to have shelter here." "For that very reason," said the questor, in the same low tone in which their conversation had been hitherto carried on, "the prior will have to lodge you in the visitor's lodging, which you saw just by the gate; for he fears the reports of brother Paul. Otherwise he would have put you in the sub-prior's rooms, he being absent. But see, now he has done himself, how brother Paul watches every mouthful that goes down the throats of others!" The questor sank his voice to a whisper, adding, in a solemn tone, "He drinks no wine--nothing but water wets his lips! Is not that a sin?--a disparaging of the gifts of God?" "It is, certainly, not using them discreetly," answered Richard of Woodville; "and, methinks, in these low lands, a cup of generous wine, such as this is, must be even more necessary to a reverend monk, who spends half his time in prayer, than to a busy creature of the world, who has plenty of exercise to keep his blood flowing." "To be sure it is!" replied the questor, who approved the doctrine highly; and thereupon he filled Woodville's can again, with a "Benedicite, noble sir."