CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND OF JEHANE THE FAIR It was in the gules of August, we read, that King Richard set out for his duchy and kingdom, on horseback, riding alone, splendid in red and gold; Countess Jehane in a litter; his true brother and his half-brother, his bishops, his chancellor, and his friends with him, each according to his degree.

They went by Alencon, Lisieux, and Pont l'Eveque to Rouen; and there they found the Queen-Mother, an unquenchable spirit.

One of Richard's first acts had been to free her from the fortress in which, for ten years or more, the old King had kept her.

There were no prison-traces upon her when she met her son, and fixed her son's mistress with a calculating eye.

A low-browed, swarthy woman, heavily built, with the wreck of great beauty upon her, having fingers like the talons of a bird and a trap-mouth; it was not hard to see that into the rocky mortice where Richard had been cast there went some grains of flint from her.