“My lord,” said Adelais, “why will you not give your parole? Then you would be free to come and go as you elected.” A little she bent toward him, a covert red showing in her cheeks. “Tonight at Halvergate the Earl of Brudenel holds the feast of Saint Michael. Give your parole, my lord, and come with us. There will be in our company fair ladies who may perhaps heal your malady.”
But the Sieur d’Arnaye only laughed. “I cannot give my parole,” he said, “since I mean to escape for all your brother’s care.” Then he fell to pacing up and down before her. “Now, by Monseigneur Saint Médard and the Eagle that sheltered him!” he cried, in half-humorous self-mockery; “however thickly troubles rain upon me, I think that I shall never give up hoping!” After a pause, “Listen, mademoiselle,” he went on, more gravely, and gave a nervous gesture toward the east, “yonder is France, sacked, pillaged, ruinous, prostrate, naked to her enemy. But at Vincennes, men say, the butcher of Agincourt is dying. With him dies the English power in France. Can his son hold that dear realm? Are those tiny hands with which this child may not yet feed himself capable to wield a sceptre? Can he who is yet beholden to nurses for milk distribute sustenance to the law and justice of a nation? Hé, I think not, mademoiselle! France will have need of me shortly. Therefore, I cannot give my parole.”
“Then must my brother still lose his sleep, lord, for always your safekeeping is in his mind. Today at cockcrow he set out for the coast to examine those Frenchmen who landed yesterday.”
At this he wheeled about. “Frenchmen!”
“Only Norman fishermen, lord, whom the storm drove to seek shelter in England. But he feared they had come to rescue you.”
Fulke d’Arnaye shrugged his shoulders. “That was my thought, too,” he admitted, with a laugh. “Always I dream of escape, mademoiselle. Have a care of me, sweet enemy! I shall escape yet, it may be.”
“But I will not have you escape,” said Adelais. She tossed her glittering little head. “Winstead would not be Winstead without you. Why, I was but a child, my lord, when you came. Have you forgotten, then, the lank, awkward child who used to stare at you so gravely?”
“Mademoiselle,” he returned, and now his voice trembled and still the hunger in his eyes grew more great, “I think that in all these years I have forgotten nothing—not even the most trivial happening, mademoiselle—wherein you had a part. You were a very beautiful child. Look you, I remember as if it were yesterday that you never wept when your good lady mother—whose soul may Christ have in his keeping!—was forced to punish you for some little misdeed. No, you never wept; but your eyes would grow wistful, and you would come to me here in the garden, and sit with me for a long time in silence. ‘Fulke,’ you would say, quite suddenly, ‘I love you better than my mother.’ And I told you that it was wrong to make such observations, did I not, mademoiselle? My faith, yes! but I may confess now that I liked it,” Fulke d’Arnaye ended, with a faint chuckle.
Adelais sat motionless. Certainly it was strange, she thought, how the sound of this man’s voice had power to move her. Certainly, too, this man was very foolish.
“And now the child is a woman—a woman who will presently be Marchioness of Falmouth. Look you, when I get free of my prison—and I shall get free, never fear, mademoiselle—I shall often think of that great lady. For only God can curb a man’s dreams, and God is compassionate. So I hope to dream nightly of a gracious lady whose hair is gold and whose eyes are colored like the summer sea and whose voice is clear and low and very wonderfully sweet. Nightly, I think, the vision of that dear enemy will hearten me to fight for France by day. In effect, mademoiselle, your traitor beauty will yet aid me to destroy your country.”
The Sieur d’Arnaye laughed, somewhat cheerlessly, as he lifted her hand to his lips.
And certainly also (she concluded her reflections) it was absurd how this man’s touch seemed an alarm to her pulses. Adelais drew away from him.
“No!” she said: “remember, lord, I, too, am not free.”
“Indeed, we tread on dangerous ground,” the Frenchman assented, with a sad little smile. “Pardon me, mademoiselle. Even were you free of your trothplight—even were I free of my prison, most beautiful lady, I have naught to offer you yonder in that fair land of France. They tell me that the owl and the wolf hunt undisturbed where Arnaye once stood. My château is carpeted with furze and roofed with God’s Heaven. That gives me a large estate—does it not?—but I may not reasonably ask a woman to share it. So I pray you pardon me for my nonsense, mademoiselle, and I pray that the Marchioness of Falmouth may be very happy.”
And with that he vanished into the autumn-fired recesses of the garden, singing, his head borne stiff. Oh, the brave man who esteemed misfortune so slightly! thought Adelais. She remembered that the Marquis of Falmouth rarely smiled; and once only—at a bull-baiting—had she heard him laugh. It needed bloodshed, then, to amuse him, Adelais deduced, with that self-certainty in logic which is proper to youth; and the girl shuddered.
But through the scarlet coppices of the garden, growing fainter and yet more faint, rang the singing of Fulke d’Arnaye.
Sang the Frenchman:
“Had you lived in Roman times
No Catullus in his rhymes
Had lamented Lesbia’s sparrow:
He had praised your forehead, narrow
As the newly-crescent moon,
White as apple-trees in
