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“Nay,” said I, with sufficient gravity, “then is this earl no longer a man, but a swine, and not fit for men’s discussion, much less that of women.”

At this reproof I saw anger again in her eye, but she was so pleased withal at having got me to call Lord Denbeigh a swine that she forebore any further personal affront.

“And yet,” she went on, “they do say he be as fine a man as a wench will walk through the rain to glimpse at, and a brave and a learned; but that he wed a Spanish maid, and she betrayed him, and so he hath vowed to hate women, one and all.”

“Hast thou seen him?”

“Nay, but I’ve had him itemized to me by the wife o’ Humfrey Lemon. A blue eye, a hooked nose, a–“

“Well, well, wife,” quoth I, “if a blue eye and a hooked nose be as bad signs in a man as they be in a horse, methinks this thy villain is a very round villain.”

“And so he is,” affirmed she.

“Yet,” said I, “there is somewhere in me a something that doth pity him.”

“By my troth!” cried my wife. “I do believe, Master Butter, that thou’dst pity the Devil’s wife in childbirth.”

“Ay, that I would!” I made answer, with a great calmness, for I saw that she sought to rouse my spleen.

“Well, do not bellow,” blurted she, “for my mistress is as sound as a gold-piece.”

Then quoth my lady, a-rising up on her elbow,

“Nay, that she is not. And, moreover, she would hear all the stories concerning this bad and bloody Lord of Denbeigh!”

II.

When Marian heard my lady so speak, methought she would have swooned in verity; for she knew my lady’s contempt for gossip. E’en for the first time in all her life, Marian could not find a word to her tongue.

“La! my lady,” said she, and then stopped and was silent. My lady laughed at her, with her deep eyes; but as was her wont, her mouth was wondrous solemn.

“Ay, nurse,” quoth she, “thou thought’st me safe i’ th’ Land o’ Nod, but one hath ears to hear there as elsewhere.” Then she reaches out one hand and plays with Marian’s ruff. “Go to, nurse,” says she. “Dost thou not see I am even i’ th’ same case with thyself? I too would gossip a little. Come, word it–word it!”

So Marian told her all that she had heard, together with a little prophesying here and there, which boded no good to my Lord Denbeigh. She told how he had e’en been a brave lad, but how in Spain he had wed with a wife who played him false; how then he had vowed vengeance on all womankind, becoming a brawler and a haunter o’ taverns; how death was in his sword and lightnings in his eye.

My lady listened, and now and again she would pinch her eyelids softly with her thumb and ring-finger, as one who is deep in thought. But when Marian paused for breath, she turned to her, and quoth she,

“Nurse, thou hast often preached unto me; listen now to my preachings. Thou shalt often hear a man abused, nurse, but chiefly for that which he hath never done. This wild lord, I doubt not, hath been guilty of sorry deeds. What man hath not? But the half that thou hast told me is not to be believed.”

Then went she to her room, taking Marian with her, but I saw that she was moved.

It was but the next day that my lady’s uncle, Sir John Trenyon, came riding into the court. He often came in such wise, to bide for a day or two with his niece. A most courteous gentleman; red of face, blue of eye, and blithe of tongue. He had a jest for each tick o’ th’ clock, and a kind word for all.

“Ah, Butter,” saith he, “and where is thy mistress? And thy wife, the good Dame Marian–where is she? And how about thy family? Hast thou no better prospects than of yore?”