The earl and the baron might be good friends again, now that they were both in disgrace together.

While he was revolving these cogitations, he was introduced to the lady, and after claiming and receiving the promise of hospitality, he inquired what she knew of the pilgrims who had just departed?
The lady told him they were newly returned from Palestine, having been long in the Holy Land.

The knight expressed some scepticism on this point.

The lady replied, that they had given her so minute a detail of her lord's proceedings, and so accurate a description of his person, that she could not be deceived in them.

This staggered the knight's confidence in his own penetration; and if it had not been a heresy in knighthood to suppose for a moment that there could be in rerum natura such another pair of eyes as those of his mistress, he would have acquiesced implicitly in the lady's judgment.