As he told all the colour rose in Grisell’s face, rosy on one side, purple, alas, on the other. “O master, good master, you will, you will!” “Is it your pleasure, then, mistress? I should have held that the kindness to you would be to rid you of him.” “No, no, no! You are mocking me! You know too well what I think! Is not this my best hope of making him know me, and becoming his true and—and—” A sob cut her short, but she cried, “I will be at all the pains and all the cost, if only you will consent, dear Master Lambert, good Master Groot.” “Ah, would I knew what is well for her!” said Lambert, turning to his wife, and making rapid signs with face and fingers in their mutual language, but Grisell burst in— “Good for her,” cried she. “Can it be good for a wife to leave her husband to be slain by the cruel men of York and Warwick, him who strove to save the young Lord Edmund? Master, you will suffer no such foul wrong. O master, if you did, I would stay behind, in some poor hovel on the shore, where none would track him, and tend him there. I will! I vow it to St. Mary.” “Hush, hush, lady! Cease this strange passion. You could not be more moved if he were the tenderest spouse who ever breathed.” “But you will have pity, sir. You will aid us. You will save us. Give him the chance for life.” “What say you, housewife?” said Groot, turning to the silent Clemence, whom his signs and their looks had made to perceive the point at issue. Her reply was to seize Grisell’s two hands, kiss them fervently, clasp both together, and utter in her deaf voice two Flemish words, “_Goot Vrow_.” Grisell eagerly embraced her in tears. “We have still to see what Skipper Vrowst says. He may not choose to meddle with English outlaws.” “If you cannot win him to take my knight, he will not take me,” said Grisell. There was no more to be said except something about the waywardness of the affections of women and dogs; but Master Groot was not ill-pleased at the bottom that both the females of the household took part against him, and they had a merry supper that night, amid the chests in which their domestic apparatus and stock-in-trade were packed, with the dried lizard, who passed for a crocodile, sitting on the settle as if he were one of the company. Grisell’s spirits rose with an undefined hope that, like Sir Gawaine’s bride, or her own namesake, Griselda the patient, she should at last win her lord’s love; and, deprived as she was of all her own relatives, there arose strongly within her the affection that ten long years ago had made her haunt the footsteps of the boy at Amesbury Manor. Groot was made to promise to say not a word of her presence in his family. He was out all day, while Clemence worked hard at her _démenagement_, and only with scruples accepted the assistance of her guest, who was glad to work away her anxiety in the folding of curtains and stuffing of mails.