The mask dropped across her face.
"All dungeons are terrible," she answered colourlessly.
She paused as if she expected him to ask more; but he said nothing, vaguely uneasy, with the feeling that comes when a hostile swordsman is faced.
For all his reticence, his secret distrust, he could not escape entirely the subtle spell she wove around him. She was beautiful; she was interested in him; she made herself attractive to him. Often he pressed the hunting-glove that he carried beneath his hauberk, and breathed a quiet prayer. He was a simple lad, untaught in the world's ways, only his native honesty and singleness of purpose betwixt him and temptation.
He required all his strength one night when she surprised him as he sat against a boulder on an Alpine hillside, the frosty stars twinkling overhead and a vasty silence below, wrestling with the contending forces in his heart.
The first he knew of her was her hand on his mailed arm.
"Ah, Messer Hugh, you are thinking of your love at home in England," she said softly.
"Love? No—'tis not so," stumbled Hugh.
"Then you have no lady you are pledged to?"
Hugh held silent, and the fingers on his arm seemed to burn through the mail.