She was immediately obeyed.

“Now, Cousin Meg, for my sake, I pray you, let that suffice.”

“Well, Lady, for your sake,” responded the Countess, with apparent reluctance, looking rather like a kite from whose talons the Queen had extracted a sparrow intended for its dinner.

“Sit you in this chamber, Cousin Meg?” asked the Queen, taking a curule chair as she spoke—the only one in the room.

“Nay, Lady. ’Tis mine hour for repeating the seven penitential psalms. I have no time to waste with these giglots.”

“Then, I pray you, give me leave to abide here myself for a season.”

“You will do your pleasure, Lady. I only pray of you to keep them from laughing and such like wickedness.”

“Nay, for I will not promise that for myself,” said Queen Blanche, with a good-tempered smile. “Go your ways, Meg; we will work no evil.”

The Countess turned and stalked out of the door again. And Clarice’s first castle in the air fell into pieces behind her.

“Now, Agatha, I pray thee shut the door,” said the Queen, “that we offend not my Cousin Margaret’s ears in her psalms. Fare ye all well, my maids? Thy face is strange to me, child.”

Clarice courtesied very low. “If it please the Lady Queen, I am but just come hither.”

She had to tell her name and sundry biographical particulars, and then, suddenly looking round, the Queen said, “And where is Heliet?”

“Please it the Lady Queen, in my chamber,” said Mistress Underdone.

“Bid her hither, good Agatha—if she can come.”

“That can she, Lady.”

Mistress Underdone left the room, and in another minute the regular tap of approaching crutches was audible. Clarice imagined their wearer to be some old woman—perhaps the mother of Mistress Underdone. But as soon as the door was opened again, she was surprised and touched to perceive that the sufferer who used them was a girl little older than herself. She came up to Queen Blanche, who welcomed her with a smile, and held her hand to the girl’s lips to be kissed. This was her only way of paying homage, for to her courtesying and kneeling were alike impossible.

Clarice felt 

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