“I did not. He angered me--he--” and Torfrida found herself in the act of accusing Hereward. She stopped instantly. “What more, Majesty? If this be true, what more may not be true of such a one as I? I submit myself to your royal grace.” “She has confessed. What punishment, ladies, does she deserve? Or, rather, what punishment would her cousins of Provence inflict, did we send her southward, to be judged by their Courts of Love?” One lady said one thing, one another. Some spoke cruelly, some worse than cruelly; for they were coarse ages, the ages of faith; and ladies said things then in open company which gentlemen would be ashamed to say in private now. “Marry her to a fool,” said Richilda, at last, bitterly. “That is too common a misfortune,” answered the lady of France. “If we did no more to her, she might grow as proud as her betters.” Adela knew that her daughter-in-law considered her husband a fool; and was somewhat of the same opinion, though she hated Richilda. “No,” said she; “we will do more. We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle.” Torfrida looked at her mistress to see if she were mad. But the Countess-Queen was serene and sane. Then Torfrida’s southern heat and northern courage burst forth. “You--marry--me--to--” said she, slowly, with eyes so fierce, and lips so vivid, that Richilda herself quailed. There was a noise of shouting and laughing in the court below, which made all turn and listen. The next moment a serving-man came in, puzzled and inclined to laugh. “May it please your Majesty, here is the strangest adventure. There is ridden into the castle-yard a beggar-man, with scarce a shirt to his back, on a great ugly mare, with a foal running by her, and a fool behind him, carrying lance and shield. And he says that he is come to fight any knight of the Court, ragged as he stands, for the fairest lady in the Court, be she who she may, if she have not a wedded husband already.” “And what says my Lord Marquis?” “That it is a fair challenge, and a good adventure; and that fight he shall, if any man will answer his defiance.” “And I say, tell my Lord the Marquis, that fight he shall not: for he shall have the fairest maiden in this Court for the trouble of carrying her away; and that I, Adela of France, will give her to him. So let that beggar dismount, and be brought up hither to me.” There was silence again. Torfrida looked round her once more, to see whether or not she was dreaming, and whether there was one human being to whom she could appeal. Her mother sat praying and weeping in a corner. Torfrida looked at her with one glance of scorn, which she confessed and repented, with bitter tears, many a year after, in a foreign land; and then turned to bay with the spirit of her old Paladin ancestor, who choked the Emir at Mont Majeur.