Darrell knelt before her.  “I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly contrives, for old time’s sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, I cannot but kiss.”  This much he did.  “And I swear in all things to obey your will.”

“O comely fool!” the Queen said, not ungently, “I contrive, it may be, but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers.  And, besides, I must have other thoughts than those which I have known too long:  I must this night take holiday from thinking them, lest I go mad.”

Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday.

“Either I mean to torture you to-morrow,” Dame Ysabeau said, presently, to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, “or else I mean to free you.  In sober verity I do not know.  I am in a holiday humor, and it is as the whim may take me.  But do you indeed love this Rosamund Eastney?  And of course she worships you?”

“It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I,—­and toward such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate.”

Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared.  “I design torture,” the Queen said; “ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau,—­Le Desir du Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, that you were wont to call her, as nowadays this Rosamund is the desire of your heart.  You lack inventiveness.”

His palms clutched at heaven.  “That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy is destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from which God has averted an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons existent I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I partake of life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him austerely kind who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead.”

She shrugged wearily.  “I scent the raw stuff of a Planh,” the Queen observed; “benedicite! it was ever your way, my friend, to love a woman chiefly for the verses she inspired.”  And she began to sing, as they rode through Baverstock Thicket.

Sang Ysabeau: 

  “Man’s love hath many prompters,
  But a woman’s love hath none;
  And he may woo a nimble wit
  Or hair that shames the sun,
  Whilst she must pick of all one man
  And ever brood thereon—­
  And for no reason,
  And not rightly,—­

  “Save that the plan was foreordained
  (More old than Chalcedon,
  Or any tower of Tarshish
  Or of gleaming Babylon),
  That she must love unwillingly
  And love till life be done,—. 
  He for a season,
  And more lightly.”

So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell.  Lord Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.