The Dowager-Duchess exclaimed, “Nay, but this is more beauteous than all you have wrought before. Ah! here is your own device! I see there is purpose in these patterns of your web. And am I not to name you?” “I pray your Highness to be silent, unless the Duchess should divine the worker. Nay, it is scarce to be thought that she will.” “Yet you have put the flower that my English mother called ‘Forget-me-not.’ Ah, maiden, has it a purpose?” “Madame, madame, ask me no questions. Only remember in your prayers to ask that I may do the right,” said Grisell, with clasped hands and weeping eyes. CHAPTER XXIX DUCHESS MARGARET I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old; Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold. LONGFELLOW, _The Belfry of Bruges_. IN another week the festivities were over, and she waited anxiously, dreading each day more and more that her gift had been forgotten or misunderstood, or that her old companion disdained or refused to take notice of her; then trying to console herself by remembering the manifold engagements and distractions of the bride. Happily, Grisell thought, Ridley was absent when Leonard Copeland came one evening to supper. He was lodged among the guards of the Duke in the palace, and had much less time at his disposal than formerly, for Duke Charles insisted on the most strict order and discipline among all his attendants. Moreover, there were tokens of enmity on the part of the French on the border of the Somme, and Leonard expected to be despatched to the camp which was being formed there. He was out of spirits. The sight and speech of so many of his countrymen had increased the longing for home. “I loathe the mincing French and the fat Flemish tongues,” he owned, when Master Lambert was out of hearing. “I should feel at home if I could but hear an honest carter shout ‘Woa’ to his horses.” “Did you have any speech with the ladies?” asked Grisell. “I? No! What reck they of a poor knight adventurer?” “Methought all the chivalry were peers, and that a belted knight was a comrade for a king,” said Grisell. “Ay, in the days of the Round Table; but when Dukes and Counts, and great Marquesses and Barons swarm like mayflies by a trout stream, what chance is there that a poor, landless exile will have a word or a glance?” Did this mean that the fair Eleanor had scorned him? Grisell longed to know, but for that very reason she faltered when about to ask, and turned her query into one whether he had heard any news of his English relations.