Even the King, who had so well guarded the secret, was entirely unprepared to hear the Montfort parentage thus publicly avowed; and the bride, who had as little known of her father’s intentions, sat with downcast eyes, blushing and tearful, while the beggar’s recitative went briefly and somewhat tremulously over his resuscitation, under the hands of the fair and faithful Isabel. Her hand was held by her bridegroom from the first, with a pressure meant to assure her that no discovery could alter his love and regard; but when the name of Montfort sounded on his ear, the hand wrung hers with anxiety; and when the entire tale had been told, and the last chord was dying away, he murmured, “Look up at me, my loveliest. Now I know why I first loved thine eyes. Thou art dearer to me than ever, for the sake of my first and best friend!” His words were only for herself. The King was saying aloud, “Well sung, fair cousin! A health, my Lords and Knights, for Sir Henry de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.” “Not so, Lords and Knights!” called this strange personage, the only one who would thus have contradicted the King; “the Earl of Leicester has long ago been dead, as you have heard. If you drink, let it be to Blind Hal of Bethnal Green.” Nor could all the entreaties of daughter, son-in-law, nor King, move him from his purpose of living and dying as Blind Hal, the beggar. He had tasted too long of liberty, he said, to put himself under constraint. To live in Somersetshire, as his daughter wished, would have been banishment and solitude to one used to divert himself with every humour of the city; and to be, as he declared, a far more complete king of the beggars than ever his cousin Edward was over England. All he would consent to, was that a room in a lodge in Windsor Park should be set apart for him under charge of Adam de Gourdon, who had been present at this scene, and was infinitely rejoiced at the sight of a scion of the House of Montfort. For the rest, he bade every one to forget his avowal, which, as he said, he had only made that the blanch lion might share with the Mohun cross; and as he added to Princess Eleanor, “that you court dames may never flout at pretty Bessee! Had the Cheddar Yeoman been the true man, none had ever known that she was a Montfort.” “Would you have given her to the Cheddar Yeoman?” burst out Joan furiously. “That he will say so, to anger thee, is certain, Joan,” said the King. “Farewell, Henry. Remember, I hold thee bound to be my comrade when I can return to the Holy War.” “Ay, when you have tamed Scotland, even as you have tamed Wales,” returned Henry. “No fear of my good brother Alexander’s realm needing such taming. Heaven forbid!” said Edward. But the beggar parted from him with a laugh. CHAPTER XVI THE PAGE’S MEMORY The pure calm picture of a blameless friend. _Lyra Apostolica_.