Through the thick-vaulted roofs of stone, which rendered every story of the keep a separate fortress, no sound of arms, of revelry or riot, could ascend to the region of the ladies; and if their comforts were inferior to those of our modern beauties, their magnificence, their splendor of costume, of equipage, of followings, their power at home, and their influence abroad, where they shone as "Queens of Love and Beauty," were held the arbiters of fame and dispensers of honor, where their smiles were held sufficient guerdon for all wildest feats of bravery, their tears expiable by blood only, their importance in the outer world of arms, of romance, of empire, were at the least as far superior; and it may be doubted, whether some, even the most spoiled of our modern fair ones, would not sigh to exchange, with the dames and demoiselles of the twelfth century, their own soft empire of the ball-room for the right to hold Courts of Love, as absolute unquestioned sovereigns, to preside at tilt and tournament, and send the noblest and the most superb of champions into mortal combat, or yet more desperate adventure, by the mere promise of a sleeve, a kerchief, or a glove. She, however, who now occupied alone the Lady's Bower of Waltheofstow was none of your proud and court-hardened ladies, who could look with no emotion beyond a blush of gratified vanity on the blood of an admirer or a lover. Though for her, young as she was, steeds had been spurred to the shock, and her name shouted among the splintering of lances and the crash of mortal conflict, she was still but a simple, amiable, and joyous child, who knew more of the pleasant fields and waving woodlands of her fair lake-country, than of the tilt-yard, the court pageant, or the carousal, and who better loved to see the heather-blossom and the blue-bell dance in the free air of the breezy fells, than plumes and banners flaunt and flutter to the blare of trumpets. The only child of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, a knight and noble of the unmixed Norman blood, a lineal descendant of one of those hardy barons who, landing with Duke William on his almost desperate emprise, had won "the bloody hand" at Hastings, and gained rich lands in the northern counties during the protracted struggle which ensued, the Lady Guendolen had early lost her mother, a daughter of the noble house of Morville, and not a very distant relative of the good knight, Sir Philip, whose hospitality she was now partaking with her father.