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What Sire Edward said was, “Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?” But Meregrett’s pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a little.

“In that event I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly company of Love’s Lunatics–

“Sots amoureux, sots privez, sots sauvages,
Sots vieux, nouveaux, et sots de tous ages”

thus he scornfully declaimed, “and as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his thorn-bush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin within the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has not yet forgotten the antique relationship–and hence it is permitted even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit, and always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so starry-eyed–“

Then he turned and pointed, no longer the zealot but the expectant captain now. “Look, my Princess!” For in the pathway from which he had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. “Mort de Dieu, we can but try,” Sire Edward said.

“Too late,” said Meregrett; and yet she followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed man’s falchion glittered across their way. “Back,” he bade them, “for by the King’s orders no man passes.”

“It were very easy now to strangle this herring,” Sire Edward reflected.

“But scarcely a whole school of herring,” the fellow retorted. “Nay, Messire d’Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueil are alive with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them–and we have our orders.”

“Concerning women?” the King said.

The man deliberated. Then Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. “There was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats,” the soldier now reflected, “and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess.”

“And in that event,” Sire Edward said, “we twain had as well bid each other adieu.”

But Meregrett only said, “You bid me go?”

He waved his hand. “Since there is no choice. For that which you have done–however tardily–I thank you. Meantime I can but return to Rigon’s hut to rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, and to encounter whatever Dame Luck may send with due decorum.”

“To die!” she said.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “In the end we necessarily die.”

Dame Meregrett turned and passed back into the hut without faltering.

And when he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. “Presently come your brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, alone, means infamy. If Philippe chance to fall into one of his Capetian rages it means death.”

“Nay, lord, it means far worse than death.” And she laughed, though not merrily.

And now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound consideration, as may we. To the fingertips this so-little lady showed a descendant of the holy Lewis he had known and loved in old years. Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as you may see a spark shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. The Valois nose she had, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and her skin the very Hyperborean snow in tint. As for her eyes, say, gigantic onyxes–or ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. They were too big for her little face; and they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which nervously endured each incident of life–invariably acquiescent, as a foreigner must necessarily be, to the custom of the country. In fine, this Meregrett was strange and brightly colored; and she seemed always thrilled with some subtle mirth, like that of a Siren who notes how the sailor pauses at the bulwark and laughs a little (knowing the outcome), and does not greatly care. Yet now Dame Meregrett’s countenance was rapt.