“That is Dame Edusa,” (A fictitious person) whispered Bertram, “the Lady Mistress. Here is Mistress Polegna—yonder little damsel with the dark locks; and the high upright dame is Mistress Sarah. She that cometh after is the Lady de Say.”
Not one of these was the golden-haired Cousin Hawise, whose years barely numbered twenty. Maude’s eyes had come back in disappointment, when Bertram touched her arm.
“Now, Maude—look now! Look, the beauteous Lady de Narbonne! (A fictitious person.) Sawest ever maiden meet to be her peer?”
Maude looked, and saw a young girlish figure, splendidly attired,—a rich red and white complexion, beautiful blue eyes, and a sunny halo of shining fair hair. But she saw as well, a cold, hard curve of the delicate lips, a proud cynical expression in the handsome eyes, a bold, forward manner. Yes, Maude admitted, the Lady de Narbonne was beautiful; yet she did not care to look at her. Bertram was disappointed. And so was Maude, for all hope of finding Hawise had disappeared.
When supper was over, the tables were lifted. The festive board was at this time literally a board or boards, which were simply set upon trestles to form a table. At the close of a meal, the tables were reduced to their primitive elements, and boards and trestles were either carried away, or heaped in one corner of the hall. The dining-room was thus virtually transmuted into the drawing-room, ceremony and precedence being discarded for the rest of the evening—state occasions of course excepted, and the royal persons present not being addressed unless they chose to commence a conversation.
Maude kept pretty strictly to her corner all that evening. She was generally shy of strangers, and none of these were sufficiently attractive to make her break through her usual habits. Least attractive of all, to her, was the lovely Lady de Narbonne. Her light, airy ways, which seemed to enchant the Earl’s knights and squires, simply disgusted Maude. She was the perpetual centre of a group of frivolous idlers, who dangled round her in the hope of leading her to a seat, or picking up a dropped glove. She laughed and chatted freely with them all, distributing her smiles and frowns with entire impartiality—except in one instance. One member of the Earl’s household never came within her circle, and he was the only one whom she seemed at all desirous to attract. This was Hugh Calverley. He held aloof from the bright lamp around which all the other moths were fluttering, and Maude fancied that he admired the queen of the evening as little as she did herself.
All at once, by no means to Maude’s gratification, the lady chose to rise and walk across the room to her corner.
“And what name hast thou, little maid?” she asked, with a light swing of her golden pomander—the vinaigrette of the Middle Ages.
Maude had become very tired of being asked her name, the more so since it was the manner in which strangers usually opened negotiations with her. She found it the less agreeable because she was conscious of no right to any surname, her mother’s being the only one she knew. So she answered “Maude” rather shortly.
“Maude—only Maude?”