But she, with the woman's wily charm, replied not a word while he was in the tide of indignation and invective; but when he paused, exhausted for the moment by his own vehemence, she took up the word-- "Ten-pence would have well paid him! At least, I am well content to know," she said, "the value of my life, and that, too, at my own father's rating. The Saxons may be, as I have heard tell, but have not seen that they are, sordid, degraded, brutal, devoid of chivalry and courtesy and love of fame; but I would wager my life there is not a free Saxon man--no, not the poorest Franklin, who would not rate the life of his coarse-featured, sun-burned daughter at something higher than the value of a heifer. But it is very well. I am rebuked. I will trouble you no farther, valiant Sir Yvo de Taillebois. I have no _right_ to trouble you, beausire, for I must sure be base-born, though I dreamed not of it, that my blood should be dearly bought at ten-pence. Were it of the pure current that mantled in the veins of our high ancestors, it should fetch something more, I trow, in the market." "Nay! nay! thou art childish, Guendolen, peevish, and all unreasonable. I spoke not of thy life, and thou knowest it right well, but of the chance, the slight merit of his own, by which he saved it." "Slight merit, father!" "Pshaw! girl, thou hast gotten me on the mere play of words. But how canst make it tally with the vast ideas of this churl's chivalry and heaven-aspiring nobility of soul, that he so little values liberty, the noblest, most divine of all things, not immortal, as to reject it thus ignobly?" "It skills not to argue with you, sir," she answered, sadly; "for I see you are resolved to refuse me my boon, as wherefore should you not, setting so little value on this poor life of mine. I know that I am but a poor, weak child, that I was a disappointment to you in my cradle, seeing that I neither can win fresh honors to your house amid the spears and trumpets, nor transmit even the name, of which you are so proud, to future generations; but I am, at least in pride, too much a Taillebois to crave, as an importunate, unmannerly suitor, what is denied to me as a free grace. Only this--were you and I in the hands of the Mussulman, captives and slaves together, and you should accept freedom as a gift, leaving your own blood in bondage, I think the Normans would hold you dishonored noble, and false knight; I am sure the Saxons would pronounce you _nidering_. I have done, sir. Let the Saxon die a slave, if you think it comports with the dignity of De Taillebois to be a slave's debtor. I thought, if you did not love me, that you loved the memory of my mother better."