For a minute the child was too much stunned by her fall to think of any thing. Then, as her recollection returned, she cast a terrified glance behind her, and saw that her pursuer had not yet appeared round the corner. And then, before she could rise, she heard a voice in front of her. "What is this, my child?" Maude looked up, past a gorgeous spread of blue and gold drapery, into a meek, quiet face--a face whose expression reassured and comforted her. A calm, pale, oval face, in which were set eyes of sapphire blue, framed by soft, light hair, and wearing a look of suffering, past or present. Maude answered the gentle voice which belonged to that face as she might have answered her mother. "I pray you of pardon, Mistress! Parnel, my fellow, ran after me and affrighted me." "Wherefore ran she after thee?" "Because she would needs see what I bare in my bosom, and I was loth she so should, lest she should do it hurt." "What is that? I will do it no hurt." Maude looked up again, and felt as if she could trust that face with any thing. So merely saying--"You will not give it Parnel, Mistress?" she drew forth her treasure and put it into the lady's hand. "I will give it to none saving thine own self. Dost know what it is, little maid?" "No, Mistress, in good sooth." "How earnest by it? 'Tis a part of a book." "My mother, that is dead, charged me to keep it; for it was all she had for to give me. I know not, in very deed, whether it be Charlemagne or Arthur"--the only two books of which poor Maude had ever heard. "But an' I could meet with one that wist to read, and that were my true friend, I would fain cause her to tell me what I would know thereabout." "And hast no true friend?" inquired the lady. "Not one," said Maude sorrowfully. "Well, little maid, I can read, and I would be thy true friend. What is it thou wouldst fain know?" "Why," said Maude, in an interested tone, "whether the great knight, of whose mighty deeds this book doth tell, should win his 'trothed love at the last, or no." For the novel-reader of the fourteenth century was not very different from the novel-reader of the nineteenth. The lady smiled, but grew grave again directly. She sat down in one of the cushioned window-seats, keeping Maude's treasured leaf in her hand. "List, little maid, and thou shalt hear--that the great Knight, of whose mighty prowess this book doth tell, shall win His 'trothed love at last." And she began to read--very different words from any Maude expected. The child listened, entranced.