'No! No! You may not say it!'
Then she dropped her face again. When she heard the King coming back and
breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and
crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen
them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with
rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in
sorrow, he put his hand upon her shoulder.
'Sha't have a better mate,' he uttered. 'Sha't be a knight's dame!
There! there!' and he fondled her great back with his hand. Her eyes
screwed tightly up, she opened her mouth wide, but no words came out,
and suddenly she shook her head as if she had been an enraged child. Her
loud cries, shaken out of her with her tears, died away as she went
across the terrace, a loud one and then a little echo, a loud one and
then two more.
'Before God!' the King said, 'that knave shall eat ten years of prison
bread.'
His wife looked still over the wooded enclosures, the little stone
walls, and the copses. A small cloud had come before the sun, and its
shadow was moving leisurely across the ridge where stood the roofless
abbey.
'The maid shall have the best man I can give her,' the King said.
'Why, no good man would wed her!' Katharine answered dully.