She might not speak for the tears that welled out from her heart; but she bowed her head and strove to smile on him. But the Earl waved his hand, and those lords, and the women also, voided the chamber, and left those two alone, the Earl standing before her. But ere he could speak, she arose from her throne and fell on her knees before him, and joined hands palm to palm, and cried in a broken voice: "Mercy! Mercy! Have pity on my young life, great Lord!" But he lifted her up, and set her on her throne again, and said: "Nay, my Lady, this is unmeet; but if thou wouldst talk and tell with me I am ready to hearken." She strove with her passion a while, and then she said: "Great Lord, I pray thee to hearken, and to have patience with a woman's weak heart. Prithee, sit down here beside me. "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." He held his peace, and his face grew dark before her while she watched it. At last he spake in a harsh voice: "Lady," he said, "it may not be; here in Greenharbour must thou abide, or in some other castle apart from the folk." "Yea," she said, "now I see it is true, that which I foreboded when first I came hither: thou wouldst slay me, that thou mayest sit safely in the seat of thy master's daughter; thou durst not send me a man with a sword to thrust me through, therefore thou hast cast me into prison amongst cruel jailers, who have been bidden by thee to take my life slowly and with torments. Hitherto I have withstood their malice and thine; but now am I overcome, and since I know that I must die, I have now no fear, and this is why I am bold to tell thee this that I have spoken, though I wot now I shall be presently slain. And now I tell thee I repent it, that I have asked grace of a graceless face."