He stood looking at
her in despair, until something in the poise of her head taught him a new rune
among love's spells. Drawing softly near her, he spoke in noblest
conciliation: "Is it your pride that cannot pardon me, Lady of Avalcomb? Do I
seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget to make my body match the
humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of
knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make
you kinder, dear one." Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,--and the
difference between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey,
was the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. "Thus then do I
ask you to give me back your love," he said gently,--and would have said more
but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.
"It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told me
that--that I have no right to be angry with you --" She broke off, as looking
into his face she saw something that startled her into forgetfulness of all
else. "Why are your cheeks so hollow?" she demanded. "And so gray--as though
you had lost blood? Lord, what has come near you?"
He could not conceal the sudden pleasure he got out of her alarm for him, even
while he answered as lightly as he could that it was no more than the fatigue
of his three days in the saddle; and a lack of food, perhaps, as he had been
somewhat pressed for time; and a lack of sleep because of--
But she was a warrior's daughter, and she would not be put off.
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