Argathona answered him as tranquilly as if she were telling an old tale to old friends in the forest. Simon gaped in wonder at her, with his hand ever at the hilt of his sword to help her. "Your son was wounded by robbers in the wood. I tended his hurt, and we changed loves and vows. While I went for healing herbs, in my absence this lady came and bore him to Athens, persuading his sick senses that it was she who had succored him." The duke frowned horridly. "A strange tale!" he thundered. "A lying tale!" the duchess cried eagerly. Then Simon came forward and faced her, and in a clap she knew that he was the man that had escaped from her in the wood, and she went pale for an instant and caught her breath. "It is a true tale, by your leave," Simon asserted, "for I was by from first to last." The duke waved woman-interrupter and man-interrupter impatiently aside, and still addressed Argathona. "How came you here?" he asked, and again the dryad answered him as calmly as if she had been singing a country-side song. "In a boy's coat I came hither; in a man's mail I rode in the jousts, and afterwards wooed and won that lady with a golden apple to send her lord to sleep with a drowsy draught and welcome me as her lover to-night." She stooped and picked the apple up as she spoke. The duke's grim frown grew grimmer. "Why did not my son drink?" he asked. Argathona answered: "I warned him not to drink, but to make believe, for I wished him to know the worth of the woman he had wedded." The face of the duke was an ugly sight to see, as he glanced from the slender girl in the boy's garb to the woman who had married his son that day and striven to murder him that night. "This is a tangled tale," he snarled, "and some here are lying their way to hell at a hand-gallop, but this is no hour and this no mood for judgment." He pawed at his forehead with his huge hands as he spoke, as if he hoped by physical effort to dispel the sudden troubles of the night. Then he turned to Esclaramonde: "Lady," he said, "if it be proved that my son has wronged you, you shall have justice, for no man is son of mine who swerves in aught from his knightly fealty, but it may prove that you have slandered my son, in which case I shall deal justice upon you." The duchess went pale anew at this threat, and those of her following standing near her made speed to ease their swords in their sheaths, seeing which act the partisans of Duke Baldwin did the like defiance. Fernand Ximenes sidled to the duchess and breathed quickly in her ear, "Defy him; I stand by you." And Esclaramonde chose defiance. With a bold and angry countenance she made a step towards the Duke of Athens. "Baldwin of Athens," she said, haughtily, "I am a sovereign prince even as you are a sovereign prince, and you hold no right of judgment over your peers. I ride hence to-night, I and my people, and from this hour, in the name of my flouted womanhood, Thebes declares war upon Athens."