“Her Highness the Princess Joan, Countess of Gloucester, please you, my liege,” replied the chamberlain; “she will not take denial.”

“Is it so hard a thing for a daughter to gain admittance to a father, even though he be a sovereign?” interrupted the princess, who, attended only by a single page bearing her train, advanced within the chamber, her firm and graceful deportment causing the lords to fall back on either side, and give her passage, though the expression of their monarch’s countenance denoted the visit was unwelcome.

“Humbly and earnestly I do beseech your grace’s pardon for this over-bold intrusion,” she said, bending one knee before him; “but indeed my business could not be delayed.  My liege and father, grant me but a few brief minutes.  Oh, for the sake of one that loved us both, the sainted one now gone to heaven, for the memory of whom thou didst once bless me with fonder love than thou gavest to my sisters, because my features bore her stamp, my king, my father, pardon me and let me speak!”

“Speak on,” muttered the king, passing his hand over his features, and turning slightly from her, if there were emotion, to conceal it.  “Thou hast, in truth, been over-bold, yet as thou art here, speak on.  What wouldst thou?”

“A boon, a mighty boon, most gracious father; one only thou canst grant, one that in former years thou wouldst have loved me for the asking, and blessed me by fulfilment,” she said, as she continued to kneel; and by her beseeching voice and visible emotion effectually confining the attention of the courtiers, now assembled in a knot at the farther end of the apartment, and preventing their noticing the deportment of the page who had accompanied her; he was leaning against a marble pillar which supported the canopy raised over the king’s couch, his head bent on his breast, the short, thick curls which fell over his forehead concealing his features; his hands, too, crossed on his breast, convulsively clenched the sleeves of his doublet, as if to restrain the trembling which, had any one been sufficiently near, or even imagined him worthy of a distant glance, must have been observable pervading his whole frame.

“A boon,” repeated the king, as the princess paused, almost breathless with her own emotion; “a mighty boon!  What can the Countess of Gloucester have to ask of me, that it moves her thus?  Are we grown so terrible that even our own children tremble ere they speak?  What is this mighty boon? we grant not without hearing.”

“’Tis the boon of life, my liege, of life thou canst bestow.  Oh, while in this world thou rulest, viceregent of the King of kings on high, combining like Him justice and mercy, in the government of his creatures, oh! like, Him, let mercy predominate over justice; deprive not of life, in the bloom, the loveliness of youth!  Be merciful, my father, oh, be merciful! forgive as thou wouldst be forgiven—­grant me the life I crave!”