"Indeed I have thought of it already, mejuffrouw. Dondersteen! I must have appeared a coward before you then!"
He gave a careless shrug of the shoulders, and very quaintly did that carelessness sit on him now that he was pinioned, wounded and in a relentless enemy's hands.
"Perhaps I am a coward," he added with a strange little sigh, "you think so; the Lord of Stoutenburg declares that I am a miserable cur. Does man ever know himself? I for one have never been worth the study."
"Nay, sir, there you do wrong yourself," she said gently, "I cannot rightly gauge what temptations did beset you when you laid hands upon a defenceless woman, or when you forged my brother's name ... for this you did do, did you not?" she asked insistently.
"Have I not confessed to it?" he retorted quietly.
"Alas! And for these crimes must I despise you," she added quaintly. "But since then my mind hath been greatly troubled. Something tells me—and would to God I saw it all more clearly—that much that you so bravely endure just now, is somehow because of me. Am I wrong?"
He laughed, a dry, gentle, self-mocking laugh.
"That I have endured much because of you, mejuffrouw," he said gaily, "I'll not deny; my worthy patron St. Bavon being singularly slack in his protection of me on two or three memorable occasions; but this does not refer to my present state, which has come about because half a dozen men fell upon me when I was unarmed and pounded at me with heavy steel skates, which they swung by their straps. The skates were good weapons, I must own, and have caused one or two light wounds which are but scraps of evil fortune that a nameless adventurer like myself must take along with kindlier favours. So I pray you, mejuffrouw, have no further thought of my unpleasant bodily condition. I have been through worse plights than this before, and if to-morrow I must hang...."
"No, no!" she interrupted with a cry of horror, "that cannot and must not be."
"Indeed it can and must, mejuffrouw. Ask the Lord of Stoutenburg what his intentions are."