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Then said I, “How if he leap at thy throat?” And she answered, “Nay, he knows better;” and with that she gripped his collar, and let swing her whip. Then did I bid Marian that she leave the room. As for me, it was my duty to stay, though, as I have given an oath to tell but the truth in this narrative, I must confess that I was in a sweat from head to foot with fear.

But the great hound crouched as though he knew he got but what he deserved, and when my lady had given him ten or twenty lashes she flung wide the door, and said she, “Get thee gone, coward! Go fare as fares the poor beggar thou sought’st to bite!” and the hound slunk out. Then turned my mistress to me, and–“Butter,” saith she, “yon beast sought to bite an old beggar as we came through the park, so I whipped him. But for naught save cruelty or disobedience will I ever whip a dog; so, Butter, the next time that thou seest me about to lash one, keep thy counsel.” (This was the harshest that my lady e’er spoke, either to me or to Marian.) Then went she to the door and called Marian.

“Come, nurse,” quoth she, “I am a-weary. Fling me some skins on the settle, and I will lie down, and thou shalt card out my locks with thy fingers.” So we heaped the settle with the skins o’ white bears, and thereon my lady cast herself, like a flower blown down upon a snow-bank; and by-and-by, what with the warmth and Marian’s strokings, she fell into a deep sleep. But we two sate and gazed on her.

She was all clad in a tight riding-dress of green velour cloth, and her white face seemed to come from the close collar like a white lily from its sheath. She was e’er flower-like, asleep or waking, as I have said, and her pretty head was sleek and yellow, like a butterfly’s wing. She was so sound that it appeared to me and Marian as though one longer breath might transform the mimicry into the actual thing–death. But by-and-by awe fell from us, as it doth ever fall, even in the presence of that which hath awed us, and my wife and I did return to our discourse concerning my Lord Denbeigh.

Quoth I to Marian, “But, wife, may not malice invent these tales?”

“Nay, nay,” said she, shaking her head; “as bloody a rogue as ever lived–as bloody a rogue as ever lived. They do say as how he’ll set a whole tavern in a broil ere he be entered in for three minutes.”

“But,” quoth I, “may he not be provoked?”

“Nay, I tell thee,” said she; “but he’ll jump at a body’s head, and cleave ‘t open ere a body can say ‘Jesus.'”

At this I said, firmly, “I doubt not but what the poor man is most surely maligned.” Whereupon Mistress Butter did wax exceeding wroth.

“Why wilt thou e’er be seeking to plead the cause o’ villains?” cried she. “First that bloody beast o’ my lady’s, now this bloody villain o’ th’ devil’s. I do wonder at thee, Anthony Butter.” Whereat I did put in that I sometimes wondered at myself.

“For why?” quoth she.

“Why, that I ever married to be worded by a wench,” said I. And at this I am most entirely sure that she would have cast her joint-stool at me, had she not been sitting on ‘t, and my lady’s head against her knee. So she called me a “zany,” and then after a little a “toad,” but went on stroking my lady’s hair.

And, by-and-by, back we come to his lordship.

“‘Tis not alone his bloody tricks and murderous ways,” quoth my wife, “that causes all Christian folk to abhor him, but he consorts with no other women than drabs and callets. Dost excuse that?”