That young lady looked at him with astonished lowering and resentful eyes, as much as to say, who was he that he should ask her such a question? The Princess had been leaning back in her chair with both elbows upon the arms and a hand caressing her chin, for all the world as if she had been an old man considering a knotty point. But, when she saw Sir Bertram and heard his voice, she said hastily and harshly: "Get up, child and your ladyship. It is not decent that a lady of high rank and my kinswoman should be spoken to kneeling by a Cornish knight of nowhere and yesterday, God help me, if he be ten times a King’s spy!" And so she bade the lady, who was the Lady Margaret of Glororem, to fetch a stool from a corner of the room and set it by her throne on the step. And there she had the Lady Margaret sit beside her and that Sir Bertram fetch off his hat with the large feather and so stand before them. "For," said she to that knight, "you may well be the King’s companion, but in this place the King’s writ does not run and I am a royal Princess and this is my cousin and niece." It was nonsense and a tyranny, but Sir Bertram did it with calmness. He cared little about forms when there was news to be had that could help him and only one old woman and one very beautiful and proud one before whom to abase himself. So he made an apology, saying that he had not known that lady to be of such high rank, she being in the dim room and not over plain to his eyes which had been gazing on the sunlight. He bent one knee and stood there composedly with his hat in his hands before him. Then that old Princess, who had affected anger affected now a complaisance towards that gentleman. She spoke as follows, formally to the Lady Margaret: "This Sir Bertram of Lyonesse," she said,—"though God knows where Lyonesse is; I have heard it is some poor islands in Scilly or Cornwall or where you will,—so this Sir Bertram of Lyonesse is the King’s commissioner to inquire into the state of these North parts. And if you will ask me what make of a thing a commissioner is, I will answer you that he is what you and I and other simple folk do call a spy. But the King calls him his commissioner and that is very well." She looked upon Sir Bertram maliciously to see if he winced. But that knight turned his face composedly to the Lady Margaret. "Ah, gentle lady," said he, "you may count that for truth. I am here to find out what I can." The old Princess liked this Sir Bertram, in truth, very well. She counted him so low, on account of his obscure and distant birth and his former poverty, that she could jest with him as if he had been a peasant boy. She considered English lords as of so low a rank against her own that she thought not much about them, one with another, except may be it was the Dacres and their kin. So she was very glad to keep this Sir Bertram, if she could do it without trouble or expense, and have some amusement from it.