My dear diplomatist, I have forgotten if you got both your husband and the gown, or the gown only, but it was a sweetly pretty letter, and worded in such a way as must have caused your good knight to smile, despite his sore. And what had you in your mind's eye when you wrote 'liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet'? It was one of those new gowns with the high waist and the bodice opening very low, the collar quite over your shoulders, and the thick fur edge on your shoulders and tapering into a point at your bosom. You wanted sleeves like wings, and a fur edge to the bottom of the gown, besides the fur upon the edges of the sleeves--those quaint sleeves, thin to your elbows, and then great and wide, like a foresail. I suppose you had an under-gown of some wonderful diapered silk which you thought would go well with scarlet, because, as you knew, the under-gown would show at your neck, and its long train would trail behind you, and its skirt would fall about your feet and show very bravely when you bunched up the short upper gown--all the mode--and so you hinted at scarlet. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] Now I come to think of it, the sleeve must have been hard to arrive at, the fashions were so many. To have had them tight would have minimized the use of your undergarment; to have had them of the same width from elbow to wrist would not have given you the newest of the new ideas to show in Norfolk; then, for some reason, you rejected the bag sleeve, which was also in the fashion. No doubt you had a cotehardie with well-fitting sleeves and good full skirts, and a surcoat with a wide fur edge, or perhaps, in the latest fashion of these garments, with an entire fur bodice to it. You may have had also one of those rather ugly little jackets, very full, with very full sleeves which came tight at the wrist, long-waisted, with a little skirt an inch or so below the belt. A mantle, with cords to keep it on, I know you had. Possibly--I have just thought of it--the sleeves of your under-gown, the tight sleeves, were laced together from elbow to wrist, in place of the old-fashioned buttons. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] I wonder if you ever saw the great metal-worker, William Austin, one of the first among English artists to leave a great name behind him--I mean the Austin who modelled the effigy of Earl Richard Beauchamp, at Warwick. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] You must have heard the leper use his rattle to warn you of his proximity. You, too, may have thought that Joan of Arc was a sorceress and Friar Bungay a magician. You may have--I have not your wonderful letter here for reference--heard all about Eleanor of Cobham, and how she did penance in a shift in the London streets for magic against the King's person.