“Why it is, my Norman, I know not. Only do I know that I did often question my own self if in truth I did really love Roger de Conde, but thee—oh Norman, why is it that there be no shred of doubt now, that this heart, this soul, this body be all and always for the Outlaw of Torn?”
“I do not know,” he said simply and gravely. “So wonderful a thing be beyond my poor brain; but I think my heart knows, for in very joy, it is sending the hot blood racing and surging through my being till I were like to be consumed for the very heat of my happiness.”
“Sh!” she whispered, suddenly, “methinks I hear footsteps. They must not find thee here, Norman of Torn, for the King has only this night wrung a promise from my father to take thee in the morning and hang thee. What shall we do, Norman? Where shall we meet again?”
“We shall not be separated, Bertrade; only so long as it may take thee to gather a few trinkets, and fetch thy riding cloak. Thou ridest north tonight with Norman of Torn, and by the third day, Father Claude shall make us one.”
“I am glad thee wish it,” she replied. “I feared that, for some reason, thee might not think it best for me to go with thee now. Wait here, I will be gone but a moment. If the footsteps I hear approach this door,” and she indicated the door by which he had entered the little room, “thou canst step through this other doorway into the adjoining apartment, and conceal thyself there until the danger passes.”
Norman of Torn made a wry face, for he had no stomach for hiding himself away from danger.
“For my sake,” she pleaded. So he promised to do as she bid, and she ran swiftly from the room to fetch her belongings.
CHAPTER XIX
When the little, grim, gray man had set the object covered with a cloth upon the table in the center of the room and left the apartment, he did not return to camp as Norman of Torn had ordered.
Instead, he halted immediately without the little door, which he left a trifle ajar, and there he waited, listening to all that passed between Bertrade de Montfort and Norman of Torn.