She had shrunk from him.  “Then the trap was yours?  It was you that lured my brother to this infamy!”

“In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich yonder,” Sire Edward gayly said.  “Faith of a gentleman! your brother has cheated me of Guienne, and was I to waste eternity in begging him to give me back my province?  Oh, no, for I have many spies in France, and have for some two years known your brother and your sister to the bottom.  Granted that I came hither incognito, to forecast your kinfolk’s immediate endeavors was none too difficult; and I wanted Guienne—­and, in consequence, the person of your brother.  Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious treachery?” Now the King of England blustered.

But the little Princess wrung her hands.  “I am this night most hideously shamed.  Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man infamously trapped, and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his cunning web, and patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly near enough.  Eh, the greater fool was I to waste my labor on the shrewd and evil thing which has no more need of me than I of it!  And now let me go hence, sire, unmolested, for the sake of chivalry.  Could I have come to the brave man I had dreamed of, I would have come cheerily through the murkiest lane of hell; as the more artful knave, as the more judicious trickster”—­and here she thrust him from her—­“I spit upon you.  Now let me go hence.”

He took her in his brawny arms.  “Fit mate for me,” he said.  “Little vixen, had you done otherwise I would have devoted you to the devil.”

Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with that queer touch of fanatic gravity:  “My dear, you are perfectly right.  I was tempted, I grant you.  But it was never reasonable that gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing.  Therefore I whispered Roger Bulmer my final decision; and he is now loosing all my captives in the courtyard of Mezelais, after birching the tails of every one of them as soundly as these infants’ pranks to-night have merited.  So you perceive that I do not profit by my trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to come to you with hands—­well! not intolerably soiled.”

“Oh, now I love you!” she cried, a-thrill with disappointment to find him so unthriftily high-minded.  “Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is a king’s ransom.”

He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek.  Masterfully he said:  “Then let Guienne serve as such and ransom for a king his glad and common manhood.  Now it appears expedient that I leave France without any unwholesome delay, because these children may resent being spanked.  More lately—­he, already I have in my pocket the Pope’s dispensation permitting me to marry, in spite of our cousinship, the sister of the King of France.”