"What can now be done?" said the Queen to Edith, in a whisper of
undisguised uneasiness.
"That which must," said Edith firmly. "We must see this
gentleman and place ourselves in his mercy."
So saying, she began hastily to undo a curtain, which at one
place covered an entrance or communication.
"For Heaven's sake, forbear--consider," said the Queen--"my
apartment--our dress--the hour--my honour!"
But ere she could detail her remonstrances, the curtain fell, and
there was no division any longer betwixt the armed knight and the
party of ladies. The warmth of an Eastern night occasioned the
undress of Queen Berengaria and her household to be rather more
simple and unstudied than their station, and the presence of a
male spectator of rank, required. This the Queen remembered, and
with a loud shriek fled from the apartment where Sir Kenneth was
disclosed to view in a compartment of the ample pavilion, now no
longer separated from that in which they stood. The grief and
agitation of the Lady Edith, as well as the deep interest she
felt in a hasty explanation with the Scottish knight, perhaps
occasioned her forgetting that her locks were more dishevelled
and her person less heedfully covered than was the wont of high-born damsels, in an age which was not,
after all, the most
prudish or scrupulous period of the ancient time.
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