The blaze of anger with which Isabel now greeted Zenas's advent into her presence subsided quickly when he told her who was waiting to see her below. She made short work of her preparations to depart, promising to do so secretly, and without stopping to bid her cousin or governess a farewell. As the hunchback was preceding her below he was exulting to himself over the circumstance that was to rid him of one of whom he was jealous and hated, and another whom he feared. He looked upon it as a happy stroke of fortune that had put it in his way to send them off together. He chuckled aloud as he thought of how cleverly he was cheating the young knight. "I am yielding him the wrong maid," he said to himself; "the wrong maid. The saffron gown doth belong to Rocelia, by my faith!" It seemed an age to Sir Richard before he heard again the hunchback's tread upon the stairs. Another step came to his straining ears, light and firm, with an accompaniment of gently rustling skirts. What would his first words be? And what her whispered answer? He thought of the saffron patch above his eye and the unkempt growth of beard upon his chin. For but two minutes' service, a barber might have earned a handful of rose nobles. Thereupon the door swung open. Without any apparent hesitation the maid, whom the young knight had always pictured as shy and prettily diffident, advanced into the ring of firelight. Like an abashed boy, he hung his head in an utter confusion. If a fortune had been laid at his feet he would have found himself powerless to look up into her waiting eyes. It seemed to him that the whole world should be pausing to view this meeting. Then his hands were caught within the grasp of soft fingers. "Richard, ... my faithful champion," a voice broke low upon the dead silence. Sir Richard then looked up. His eyes fell upon a pair of firm, curved lips, a row of dazzling white teeth, a wonderful quantity of raven-black hair, shadowing beautifully marked brows and masterful, deep-gray eyes. His sight was too blurred to see altogether clearly, but he knew her to be comely and bewitching withal. In despite of this, a sort of vague but exquisite melancholy fell upon his highly wrought spirits. It was as indefinable as a fevered dream, but it seemed to him to answer to the name of disappointment. He felt that he would have been more pleased had the maid displayed in her manner less of assurance and more of timidity and reserve. Isabel began by busily removing the patch from Sir Richard's eye, assuring him of her genuine appreciation of his knightly conduct in so long having worn it. He did not tell her that it had been there but a day. Then, commanding Zenas to bring food and wine, which he did without a word of remonstrance, she set the table and bade Sir Richard to eat. When the hunchback went out of the room he told her of his meeting with the Douglas foot-boys.