Dona Cancha had been quick enough to perceive that the eyes of her
young mistress were wont to rest with a kind of melancholy gentleness on
Bertrand, a young man of handsome appearance but with a sad and dreamy
expression; so when she made up her mind to speak in his interests, she
was persuaded that the queen already loved him. Still, a bright colour
overspread Joan's face, and her anger would have fallen on both culprits
alike, when in the next room a sound of steps was heard, and the voice
of the grand seneschal's widow in conversation with her son fell on the
ears of the three young people like a clap of thunder. Dona Cancha, pale
as death, stood trembling; Bertrand felt that he was lost--all the
more because his presence compromised the queen; Joan only, with that
wonderful presence of mind she was destined to preserve in the most
difficult crises of her future life, thrust the young man against the
carved back of her bed, and concealed him completely beneath the ample
curtain: she then signed to Cancha to go forward and meet the governess
and her son.

But before we conduct into the queen's room these two persons, whom our
readers may remember in Joan's train about the bed of King Robert,
we must relate the circumstances which had caused the family of the
Catanese to rise with incredible rapidity from the lowest class of the
people to the highest rank at court. When Dona Violante of Aragon, first
wife of Robert of Anjou, became the mother of Charles, who was later on
the Duke of Calabria, a nurse was sought for the infant among the most
handsome women of the people. After inspecting many women of equal merit
as regards beauty, youth and health, the princess's choice lighted on
Philippa, a young Catanese woman, the wife of a fisherman of Trapani,
and by condition a laundress. This young woman, as she washed her linen
on the bank of a stream, had dreamed strange dreams: she had fancied
herself summoned to court, wedded to a great personage, and receiving