“Nay, you escape me not so,” said the page; “if you deal not justly by me, I will call out to Dame Bridget, or whatever your dame be called, and proclaim you for a cheat.”
“You shall not need,” answered the maiden—“my history is the counterpart of your own; the same words might almost serve, change but dress and name. I am called Catherine Seyton, and I also am an orphan.”
“Have your parents been long dead?”
“This is the only question,” said she, throwing down her fine eyes with a sudden expression of sorrow, “that is the only question I cannot laugh at.”
“And Dame Bridget is your grandmother?”
The sudden cloud passed away like that which crosses for an instant the summer sun, and she answered with her usual lively expression, “Worse by twenty degrees—Dame Bridget is my maiden aunt.”
“Over gods forbode!” said Roland—“Alas! that you have such a tale to tell! and what horror comes next?”
“Your own history, exactly. I was taken upon trial for service—”
“And turned off for pinching the duenna, or affronting my lady's waiting-woman?”
“Nay, our history varies there,” said the damsel—“Our mistress broke up house, or had her house broke up, which is the same thing, and I am a free woman of the forest.”