“Assuredly.”
“Then wreak your will—you and Satan together!”
“How conceive we by that, fair Cousin?” inquired the King rather satirically.
“Have your will, man!” she said wearily, as if she were tired of keeping measures with him any longer. “Things be sorely acrazed in this world. If there be an other world where they be set straight, there shall be some travail to iron out the creases.”
“Signify you that you will sign this paper?”
Isabel passed the paper quietly to Henry.
“What matter what I signify, or what I sign? If my name must needs be writ up in black soot, it were as well done on that paper as an other.”
The King laid the document on the table, where the standish was already, and with much show of courtesy, offered a pen to his prisoner. She knelt down to sign, holding the pen a moment idle in her fingers.
“What a little matter art thou!” she said, soliloquising dreamily. “A grey goose quill! Yet on one stroke of thee all my coming life hangeth.”