"When did you see him last, Martin?"
"Two minutes ago, lady. I come this moment from the hall."
"What was he doing, Martin?"
Martin Goodfellow hesitated. He knew something of love, and as much as an honest man may know, of women. He shrewdly suspicioned what she would expect the Knight to be doing. He was sorely tempted to give a fancy picture of Sir Hugh d'Argent, in his lovelorn loneliness.
He looked into the clear eyes bent upon him; glanced at the firm hand, arrested for a moment in its caress of Icon's neck; then decided that, though the truth might probably be unexpected, a lie would most certainly be unwise.
"Truth to tell," said Martin Goodfellow, "Sir Hugh was testing his armour, and sharpening his battle-axe."
As Mora passed into the dim coolness of the buttery, she was conscious of a very definite sense of surprise. She had pictured Hugh in his lonely home, nursing his hungry heart, beside his desolate hearth. She had seen herself coming softly behind him, laying a tender hand upon those bowed shoulders; then, as he lifted eyes in which dull despair would quickly give place to wondering joy, saying: "Hugh, I am come home."
But now, as she passed through the buttery, Mora had to realise that yet again she had failed to understand the man she loved.
It was not in him, to sit and brood over lost happiness. If she failed him finally, he was ready in this, as in all else, to play the man, going straight on, unhindered by vain regret.
Once again her pride in him, in that he was finer than her own conceptions, quickened her love, even while it humbled her, in her own estimation, to a place at his feet.