"'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed—oh, pardon me again, I pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was too fiercely mad to bandy words with him."
"What made you mad, Monsieur John?"
"'Twas his threat to me—to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you greatly blame me, Margery?"
"No."
Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for speaking.
"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length. "He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."
Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I smiled within.
"That is the way of all the world in war-time, ma petite. A partizan may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."
'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the answering flash.
"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels come and quarter on us—"