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