But when the
day came when the King, her father, returned, and led through the gate
the lady who was his bride, there were many who knew that it would have
been well for the Princess had she still been left in her loneliness.
Gracious indeed was her welcome to her mother's supplanter, for she
loved her father, and this was the wife of his choice.
"Oh! welcome, father," she said, and handed to him the keys of the
castle of which she had kept such faithful ward, and, holding up a face
as fresh and fragrant as a wild rose at the dawn of a June day, she
kissed her step-mother.
"Welcome, my step-mother," she said, "for all that's here is yours."
Many a gallant Northumbrian lord was there that day, and many a lord
from the southern land was in the King's noble retinue. One of them it
was who spoke what the others thought, and to the handsome Queen who had
listened already overmuch to the praises her husband sang of his
daughter, the Princess Margaret, the words were as acid in a wound.
"Meseemeth," said he, "that in all the north country there is no lady so
fair, nor none so good as this most beautiful Princess."
Proudly the Queen drew herself up, and from under drooped eyelids, with
the look of a hawk as it swoops for its prey, she made answer to the
lord from the south.
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