"Did you strike no blow yesterday?" she asked.
"None of which a soldier may be proud—it was but a lot of canaille."
For a moment the Countess looked him steadily in the eyes—then answered in those tones of finality from which he knew there lay no appeal.
"Sir Aymer, you ask for that which no man has ever had from me. Many times—and I say it without pride—has it been sought by Knights most worthy; yet to them all have I ever given nay. Beatrix de Beaumont bestows nor gage nor favor until she plight her troth."
With a smile, whose sweetness De Lacy long remembered in after days, she gave him her hand, and he bent low over it and touched it to his lips. Then suddenly she whisked it from him and was gone behind the arras.
VIII
THE INN OF NORTHAMPTON
When De Lacy—now in ordinary riding dress, his armor having been relegated to the baggage beasts—reached the main highway the following morning, he looked in vain for the dust of Gloucester's column or the glimmer of sun on steel. The road was deserted. Not a traveler was in sight, and there being no means of ascertaining if the Duke had passed, he adopted the only safe course and took up the march for London. Presently, upon cresting a hill, they met a pair of Black Friars trudging slowly along towards York; but little information was obtained from them, for they had not been on the road yesterday, having spent the last week at a neighboring monastery, which they had quit only that morning. It was rumored there, however, that the Duke of Gloucester had passed southward the prior day with a great train of attendants. This, at least, was some slight indication, and thanking them courteously De Lacy jogged on; but it was not until they reached Doncaster, about noon, that accurate knowledge of the Duke was obtained.
Halting before the inn of the "Silver Sun," a ramshackle old house, from over whose door, as proclaiming the character of the place, projected a long pole with a bunch of furze on the end, De Lacy called, "Ho, within!"