Sang Sir Gregory:

"Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--"[4]

and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish;
the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and
you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered
it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death
warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were
rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their
contriver. Yet the minstrel added a new peroration.

Sang Sir Gregory:

"Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit--
Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,
Et d'une fille--et la vois si--
Et grandement suis esbahi."

And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without
speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught
between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her.
She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the
buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments from her, and resting the
dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit