“Tell the lovely mistress of this fair bird, that Sir Patrick Hepborne willingly submits him to what penance she may enjoin for the alarm he caused her,” said the knight; “and tell, too, that he gave life to her expiring falcon, by cherishing it in his bosom.”
“I give thee thanks in mine own name, and that of the lady who owneth the hawk,” said the esquire. “Trust me, thy sin will be forgotten in the signal service thou hast done her. The bird, methinks, rouseth him as if there were no longer evil in him.”
“Yea, he proyneth and manteleth him as if rejoicing that he shall again embrace his lady’s wrist with his sengles,” said the knight. “Happy bird! depardieux, but he is to be envied. Tell his fair mistress, that if the small service it hath been my good fortune to render her, may merit aught of boon at her hands, let my reward be mine enlistment in that host of gallant knights who may have vowed devotion to her will.” [[21]]
“Sir Knight,” said the squire, “I will bear thy courteous message to her who owneth the falcon; and if I tarry not longer to give the greater store of thanks, ’tis that the Lady Eleanore de Selby hath spurred away so fast, that I must have a fiend’s flight if I can catch her.” And turning his horse with these words he tarried not for further parlance.
“’Tis a strange adventure, Assueton,” said Hepborne to his friend, as they pursued their journey; “to meet thus with the peerless Eleanore de Selby at the very moment she formed the subject of our discourse.”
“’Tis whimsical enow,” said Assueton, drily; “yet it is nothing marvellous.”
“Albeit that the growing darkness left me but to guess at the excellence of her features, from the elegance of her person,” continued Hepborne, “yet do I confess myself more than half enamoured of her by very intuition. Didst thou observe that her attendant who talked so forwardly, though not devoid of grace, showed in her superior presence but as a mere mortal beside a goddess?”
“Nay,” replied Assueton, “though I do rarely measure or weigh the points of women, and am more versant in those of a battle-steed, yet methought that the attendant, as thou callest her, had the more noble port of the two.”
“Fie on thy judgment, Assueton,” cried Hepborne; “to prefer the saucy, pert demeanour of an over-indulged hand-maid, to the dignified deportment of gentle birth. The Lady Eleanore de Selby—she, I mean, in the reddish-coloured mantle, she who wept for the hawk—was as far above her companion in the elegance of her air, as heaven is above earth.”
“May be so,” replied Assueton with perfect indifference. “’Tis a question not worth the mooting.”