mind, while his high spirit led him to speak on, as if in
contempt of both.

"You can flatter, Sir Knight," he said, "but you escape me not.
I must know more from you than you have yet told me. Saw you my
royal consort when at Engaddi?"

"To my knowledge--no, my lord," replied Sir Kenneth, with
considerable perturbation, for he remembered the midnight
procession in the chapel of the rocks.

"I ask you," said the King, in a sterner voice," whether you were
not in the chapel of the Carmelite nuns at Engaddi, and there saw
Berengaria, Queen of England, and the ladies of her Court, who
went thither on pilgrimage?"

"My lord," said Sir Kenneth, "I will speak the truth as in the
confessional. In a subterranean chapel, to which the anchorite
conducted me, I beheld a choir of ladies do homage to a relic of
the highest sanctity; but as I saw not their faces, nor heard
their voices, unless in the hymns which they chanted, I cannot
tell whether the Queen of England was of the bevy."

"And was there no one of these ladies known to you?"

Sir Kenneth stood silent.

"I ask you," said Richard, raising himself on his elbow, "as a
knight and a gentleman--and I shall know by your answer how you
value either character--did you, or did you not, know any lady