“Wretched boy!” said the Lady Godiva, and hid her face in her hands; “and more wretched I, to have brought such a son into the world!” The monk had hardly finished his doleful story, when there was a pattering of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting and laughing outside, and a voice, above all, calling for the monk by name, which made that good man crouch behind the curtain of Lady Godiva’s bed. The next moment the door of the bower was thrown violently open, and in walked, or rather reeled, a noble lad eighteen years old. His face was of extraordinary beauty, save that the lower jaw was too long and heavy, and that his eyes wore a strange and almost sinister expression, from the fact that the one of them was gray and the other blue. He was short, but of immense breadth of chest and strength of limb; while his delicate hands and feet and long locks of golden hair marked him of most noble, and even, as he really was, of ancient royal race. He was dressed in a gaudy costume, resembling on the whole that of a Highland chieftain. His knees, wrists, and throat were tattoed in bright blue patterns; and he carried sword and dagger, a gold ring round his neck, and gold rings on his wrists. He was a lad to have gladdened the eyes of any mother: but there was no gladness in the Lady Godiva’s eyes as she received him; nor had there been for many a year. She looked on him with sternness,--with all but horror; and he, his face flushed with wine, which he had tossed off as he passed through the hall to steady his nerves for the coming storm, looked at her with smiling defiance, the result of long estrangement between mother and son. “Well, my lady,” said he, ere she could speak, “I heard that this good fellow was here, and came home as fast as I could, to see that he told you as few lies as possible.” “He has told me,” said she, “that you have robbed the Church of God.” “Robbed him, it may be, an old hoody crow, against whom I have a grudge of ten years’ standing.” “Wretched, wretched boy! What wickedness next? Know you not, that he who robs the Church robs God himself?” “And he who harms God’s people,” put in the monk from behind the chair, “harms his Maker.”