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But the little Princess wrung her hands. “I am this night most hideously shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man infamously trapped, and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his cunning web, and patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly near enough. Eh, the greater fool was I to waste my labor on the shrewd and evil thing which has no more need of me than I of it! And now let me go hence, sire, and unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. Could I have come to you but as to the brave man I had dreamed of, I had come through the murkiest lane of hell; as the more artful knave, as the more judicious trickster”–and here she thrust him from her–“I spit upon you. Now let me go hence.”

He took her in his brawny arms. “Fit mate for me,” he said. “Little vixen, had you done otherwise I had devoted you to the devil.”

Anon, still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that her feet swung quite clear of the floor, Sire Edward said: “Look you, in my time I have played against Fate for considerable stakes–for fortresses, and towns, and strong citadels, and for kingdoms even. And it was only to-night I perceived that the one stake worth playing for is love. It were easy enough to get you for my wife; but I want more than that…. Pschutt! I know well enough how women have these notions: and carefully I weighed the issue–Meregrett and Guienne to boot? or Meregrett and Meregrett’s love to boot?–and thus the final destination of my captives was but the courtyard of Mezelais, in order I might come to you with hands–well! not intolerably soiled.”

“Oh, now I love you!” she cried, a-thrill with disappointment. “Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is a king’s ransom.”

He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his stiff and yellow beard caressed her burning cheek. Masterfully he said: “Then let it serve as such and ransom for a king his glad and common manhood. Ah, m’amye, I am both very wise and abominably selfish. And in either capacity it appears expedient that I leave France without any unwholesome delay. More lately–he, already I have within my pocket the Pope’s dispensation permitting me to marry the sister of the King of France, so that I dare to hope.”

Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth toward his hot and bearded lips. “Patience,” she said, “is a virtue; and daring is a virtue; and hope, too, is a virtue: and otherwise, beau sire, I would not live.”

And in consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation (Nicolas concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our Lady’s nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward’s reign, came to the British realm, and landed at Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have been in consonance with seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the other daughter of King Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day proceeded to Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, King of England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and therein espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregret.