Maude kept pretty strictly to her corner all that evening. She was generally shy of strangers, and none of these were sufficiently attractive to make her break through her usual habits. Least attractive of all, to her, was the lovely Lady de Narbonne. Her light, airy ways, which seemed to enchant the Earl's knights and squires, simply disgusted Maude. She was the perpetual centre of a group of frivolous idlers, who dangled round her in the hope of leading her to a seat, or picking up a dropped glove. She laughed and chatted freely with them all, distributing her smiles and frowns with entire impartiality--except in one instance. One member of the Earl's household never came within her circle, and he was the only one whom she seemed at all desirous to attract. This was Hugh Calverley. He held aloof from the bright lamp around which all the other moths were fluttering, and Maude fancied that he admired the queen of the evening as little as she did herself. All at once, by no means to Maude's gratification, the lady chose to rise and walk across the room to her corner. "And what name hast thou, little maid?" she asked, with a light swing of her golden pomander--the vinaigrette of the Middle Ages. Maude had become very tired of being asked her name, the more so since it was the manner in which strangers usually opened negotiations with her. She found it the less agreeable because she was conscious of no right to any surname, her mother's being the only one she knew. So she answered "Maude" rather shortly. "Maude--only Maude?" "Only Maude. Madam, might it like your Ladyship to tell me if you wit of one Hawise Gerard anything?" If the Lady de Narbonne would talk to her, Maude resolved to utilise the occasion; though she felt there could be little indeed in common between her gentle, modest cousin, and this far from retiring young widow. That they could not have been intimate friends Maude was sure; but acquaintances they might be--and must be, unless the Lady de Narbonne had been too short a time at Pleshy to know Hawise. As Maude in speaking lifted her eyes to the lady's face, she saw the smiling lips grow suddenly grave, and the cold bright light die out of the beaming eyes. "Child," said the Lady de Narbonne seriously, "Hawise Gerard is dead." "Woe is me! I feared so much," answered Maude sorrowfully. "And might it please you, Madam, to arede [tell] me fully when she died, and how, and where?" "She died to thee, little maid, when she went to the Castle of Pleshy," was the unsatisfactory answer. "May I wit no more, Madam? Your Ladyship knew her, trow?"