This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her stolid husband’s side, the girl’s heart raged at memory of the decade so newly overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or that ungracious patron—­on any one who would take charge of her while the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England.  Slights enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and physical hunger also she had known, who was the child of a king and a saint.[2] But now she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, and later still, she and Etienne would be very happy:  in fine, to-morrow was to be a new day.

So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new page of his—­this Miguel de Rueda,—­a jolly lad, who whistled and sang inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill.

Sang Miguel de Rueda: 

  “Man’s Love, that leads me day by day
  Through many a screened and scented way,
  Finds to assuage my thirst.

  “No love that may the old love slay,
  None sweeter than the first.

  “Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast
  As this or that fair maid trips past,
  Once, and with lesser stir
  We viewed the grace of love, at last,
  And turned idolater.

  “Lad’s Love it was, that in the spring
  When all things woke to blossoming
  Was as a child that came
  Laughing, and filled with wondering,
  Nor knowing his own name—­”

“And still I would prefer to think,” the big man interrupted, heavily, “that Sicily is not the only allure.  I would prefer to think my wife so beautiful.—­And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary.”

The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a decade.

The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in Castile.  “When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de Gatinais.  He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this neat affair.  And in reason, England must support my Uncle Richard’s claim to the German crown, against El Sabio—­Why, my lad, I ride southward to prevent a war that would devastate half Europe.”

“You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole chance of happiness,” Miguel de Rueda estimated.

“That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do not question my wife does.  Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter, whereas war is a great disaster.  You have not seen—­as I, my little Miguel, have often seen—­a man viewing his death-wound with a face of stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord’s quarrel and understanding never a word of it.  Or a woman, say—­a woman’s twisted and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush this body.  Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout that I ride southward.”