While all these lads from twelve to twenty were fencing, riding, or playing palm-play in the court, their sisters were employed in my lady’s company. They seldom came together with the men of the castle, save on holidays and feast-days. At other times they spent their time in my lady’s chamber or tiring-room, or walked with her in the country, for it was held unseemly that ladies of noble birth should be met walking alone. They were, in fact, much in the position of “girls still in the schoolroom” in a modern country-house. They learned their lessons with their governess, practised their lute, went to church every morning, embroidered chasubles and altar-cloths, and worked wonderful hangings for the cold stone walls. And there were from seventy to a hundred yards of needlework in a set of hangings! They could also spin fine silk and linen, and ornament with needlework their feast-day veils and dresses. (The less interesting forms of sewing were left to the army of tire-women and waiting-women who attended on the noble maidens and their lady.) They all knew how to ride and how to fly a hawk, to make wreaths and posies, to sing, to play, to beguile the long hours with chess, tric-trac, draughts; and the youngest of them began to deal and shuffle the new-invented “naypes,” or “naibi”--the first playing-cards. They could pluck or brew virtuous simples, bind a broken limb, or nurse a fever. They could amuse the convalescent with endless tales of the Round Table, with the legends of Charlemagne, and with lives of the saints no less interesting and romantic. Most of them could read aloud some novel: _Cléomadès_ or _Mélusine_. They must, I think, have been blithe, charming, capable companions in the long winter of a lonely country-house. On the whole, with its constant undercurrent of chivalry and religion, theirs was an education which left its women delightful, tender of heart, and generous, if, perhaps, with little moral strength to resist the illusions of the heart. VII