"On my word you seem to have found a fish and fowl season," rejoined the abbess, playing upon the word _meet_. We must recollect that she had but little to amuse herself with in her solitude, and therefore forgive her. She continued, however, in a graver tone: "Is it that you wish to speak with me alone?" "Yes, lady," answered the man. "Three pair of ears have generally got three mouths belonging to them, and that is too many by two." "Then I'll carry mine out of the way, goodman Boyd," said Iola, giving him a gay nod, and moving towards the door; "I love not secrets of any kind. Heaven shield me from having any of my own, for I should never keep them." The woodman looked after her with a smile, murmuring in a low voice as if to himself-- "Yet I think she would keep other people's better than most." Then, waiting till Constance had followed her cousin from the room, he continued, speaking to the abbess: "you'll have visitors at the abbey, lady, before this time to-morrow night." "Marry, that is news, goodman," answered the abbess; "and for this then you have made all this great preparation. It must be an earl, or duke at least, if not king Richard himself--God save the mark that I should give the name of king to one of his kindred. Methinks you might have told me this without such secrecy. Who may these visitors be?" "They are very simple gentlemen, my lady," answered the woodman, "though well to do in the world. First and foremost, there is the young Lord Chartley, a young nobleman with as many good points as a horse-dealer's filly; a baron of the oldest race, a good man at arms. He can read and write, and thanks God for it, makes verses when he is in love--which is every day in the week with some one--and, to crown all, is exceedingly rich as these hard times go." "You seem to be of his privy chamber, goodman Boyd," said the abbess; "you deliver him so punctually." "I deliver him but as his own servants delivered him to me," answered the woodman. "Tell me, was he not in the battle of Barnet, fighting for the red rose?" inquired the abbess. "Ay, and sorely wounded there. He shall be right welcome, if it were but for that."