While she pondered what interpretation lay likeliest on this sudden flowering of unaccustomed splendour within the chrysoprase, behold one of her women of the bed-chamber who brought lights, and said, standing before her, “Twain of those lords of Witchland would speak with your ladyship in private.”
“Two?” said Mevrian. “There’s safety yet in numbers. Which be they?”
“Highness, they be tall and slim of body. They be black-avised. They bear them discreet as dormice, and most commendably sober.”
Mevrian asked, “Is it the Lord Gro? Hath he a great black beard, much curled and perfumed?”
“Highness, I marked not that either weareth a beard,” said the woman, “nor their names I know not.”
“Well,” said Mevrian, “admit them. And do thou and thy fellows attend me whiles I give them audience.”
So it was done according to her bidding. And there entered in those two sons of Corund.
They greeted her with respectful salutations, and Heming said, “Our errand, most worshipful lady, was for thine own ear only if it please thee.”
Mevrian said to her women, “Make fast the doors, and attend me in the ante-chamber. And now, my lords,” said she, and waited for them to begin.
She was seated sideways in the window, betwixt the light and the dark. The crystal lamps shining from within the room showed deeper darknesses in her hair than night’s darkness without. The curve of her white arms resting in her lap was like the young moon cradled above the sunset. A falling breeze out of the south came laden with the murmur of the sea, far away beyond fields and vineyards, restlessly surging even in that calm weather amid the sea-caves of Stropardon. It was as if the sea and the night enfolding Demonland gasped in indignation at such things as Corinius, holding himself already an undoubted possessor of his desires, devised for that night in Krothering.