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"Nay, madame, you are Lady of Whitburn by right." "By right, may be, but not in fact, nor could I be known as mine own self without cumbering him with my claims. No, let me alone to be Grisell as ever before, an English orphan, bower-woman to Vrow Clemence if she will have me."
"Know you where you be journeying, my mistress?" "Into Derbyshire," she answered. "Have there all I know." "But you wot, surely, whom you go to serve?" "Truly, I wot nothing," she replied, "only that I go to be bower-woman to some lady. The lady that saw me, and bound me thereto, said that I might look to learn on the road." "Dear heart! and is that all they told you?" "All, my master."
"This maiden," replied Eveline, "is my bower-woman, and acquainted with my most inward thoughts; I beseech you to permit her presence at our conference." "It were better otherwise," said Hugo de Lacy, with some embarrassment; "but your pleasure shall be obeyed." He led the Lady Eveline into the tent, and entreated her to be seated on a large pile of cushions, covered with rich Venetian silk.
"It might be without your knowledge," said the boy. "They say it healed as no chirurgeon could have healed it, and by magic arts." "Ha! the lubbard oafs. You know better than to believe them, Dick." "Nay, sir, but 'tis her bower-woman and Madge, the cook's wife. Both aver that the lady hath bewitched whoever comes in her way ever since she crossed the door.
"It is all that is left of him who was the Constable, at least," replied De Lacy; "and old Hugh willingly forgives your freedom, in consideration of your good news. Where are Flammock and his daughter?" "Rose is with the Lady Eveline," said Dame Gillian; "her ladyship, belike, chose her for bower-woman in place of me, although Rose was never fit to attire so much as a Dutch doll."
Hob came to be once more his attendant, Dolly was Anne's bower-woman, and Simon Bunce Sir Harry's squire, though he never ceased blaming himself for having left his master, dead as he thought, when even a poor hound was more trusty.
"The deil's in the carline," said Tibb to herself, "because she was the wife of a cock-laird, she thinks herself grander, I trow, than the bower-woman of a lady of that ilk!" Having given vent to her suppressed spleen in this little ejaculation, Tibb also betook herself to slumber. A priest, ye cry, a priest! lame shepherds they, How shall they gather in the straggling flock?
Clemence would not consent to treat her as bower-woman, and it was agreed that she should remain as one of the many orphans made by the civil war in England, without precise definition of her rank, and be only called by her Christian name.
Lady Foljambe, with a low reverence, assured his Grace that she had been entirely unaware, like Amphillis herself, that her bower-woman could claim even remote kindred with so exalted a house and so dignified a person; and that in future she should assume the position proper to her birth.
She was Burgundian, but her home having been harried in the wars, her husband had taken service as a man-at-arms with the Baron of Balchenburg, she herself becoming the bower-woman of the Baroness, now dead.
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