"I was, Beltane."
"Knew you my mother well, also?"
"Thy mother? Why—aye, forsooth, I—knew thy mother—very well,
Beltane."
"What manner of woman was she, I pray?"
"The fairest and noblest these eyes have e'er beheld!"
"The—noblest?"
"And purest! Hark ye, Beltane, and mark me well—there ne'er lived wife of so stainless honour as the noble woman that bare thee!"
"And yet," sighed Beltane, with wrinkled brow, "within the garden of
Pentavalon—my father—"
"Thy father was a sick man, faint with wounds and spent with hardship. All that day, as we rode unto Pentavalon City, he and I, his mind oft wandered and he held wild talk in his fever. But hale was I, mind and body, and I do know the Duke thy father fell to strange and sudden madness upon that dreadful day, whereby came woe to Pentavalon, and bitter remorse to him. This do I swear, thy mother was noble wife and saintly woman!"
"Loved she my father?"