"Methinks you had better do me to wit whom your avisement should have me to wed," said Maude, standing on her dignity, and manufacturing an angry tone to keep herself from crying. She would certainly have released her hold of Bertram, and have sat on her pillion in indignant solitude, if she had not felt almost sure that the result would be a fall in the mud. Bertram's answer was quick and decided. "Me!" Maude would have answered with properly injured dignity if she could; but a disagreeable lump of something came into her throat which spoilt the effect. "Thou hadst better wed me, Maude," said Bertram coaxingly, dropping his voice and his conventionalities together. "There is not a soul loveth thee as I do; and thou likest me well." "I pray you, Master Lyngern, when said I so much?" responded Maude, stung into speech again. "Just twenty years gone, little Maude," was the gentle answer. Bertram's voice had changed from its bantering tone into a tender, quiet one, and Maude felt more inclined to cry than ever. "Is that saying truth no longer, Maude?" Maude's conscience whispered to her that she must not say any thing of the sort. Still she thought it only proper to hold out a little longer. She was silent; and Bertram, who thought she was coming round, let her alone for a short time. The grey towers of Cardiff slowly rose to view, and in a few seconds more they would no longer be alone. "Well, Maude?" asked Bertram softly. "Is it ay or nay?" "As you will, Master Lyngern." This was Bertram's wooing; and Maude wondered, when she was alone, if any woman had been so wooed before. Constance expressed the greatest satisfaction when she heard of her bower-woman's approaching marriage; but one item of Bertram's project she commanded altered--namely, that Maude's nuptials should not take place on the same day as her own. "Why, Maude!" she said, "if our two weddings be one day, I shall have but an half-day's rejoical, and thou likewise! Nay, good maid! we will have each her full day, and a bonfire in the base court, and feasting, and dancing to boot. Both on one day, quotha! marry, but that were niggardly." So Maude was married on the Saturday previous to her mistress. She was dressed in lilac damask, trimmed with swansdown, and her hair, for the last time in her life, streamed over her shoulders and fell at its own sweet will. Matrons always tucked away their hair in the dove-cote, while widows were careful not to show a single lock. Bertram exhibited extraordinary splendour, for he was generally rather careless about his dress. He wore a red damask gown, trimmed with rabbit's fur; a bright blue under-tunic; a pair of red boots with white buttons; and he bore in his hand a copped hat of blue serge. The copped hat had no brim, and was about a foot and a half in height. Bertram's appearance, therefore, to say the least, was striking.