'Why struggle, Eadgyth? Fate has united you when all pointed to separation. Eadgyth, he needs thee. I told thee sooth when I said he was in safety. But he has suffered much. He is ill. Be thou his leech. Dame Amicia will attend thee—her motherly heart warms towards the youth.'
'Ill?' Eadgyth looked in the countess's eyes with almost fierce questioning.
'Ill,' repeated Emma, smiling. 'Not dying; not in danger; I said "safe." It is a long story, Eadgyth, but I must tell it thee.'
Then she told the history we already know; and how, after Eadgyth's remark about him on the battlements, it had entered her heart to have a mass said for him; how it had led to his discovery, and how she had visited him in his dungeon.
When she came to that point, and narrated her visit, describing his sorrowful aspect with unconscious pathos, Eadgyth sprang up and clasped her hands above her head. 'Oh, the terrible injustice of it!' she groaned, and afterwards she paced backwards and forwards, unable to control her emotion.
'But thy hero was shrewdly saucy, Eadgyth. Woebegone and desperate as he was,—I almost wish I had let thee see the figure he cut, with his unkempt beard and tangled locks, as long as those of thy Saxon champions,—natheless he would make no terms. I might free him, or leave him chained by the leg like a hobbled steed, as I found him. One might have thought he had passed a pleasant time down there in the dark. He would not even give me his parole not to help our besiegers if I gave him the chance.'
Eadgyth's eyes lighted up with a proud joy. 'That was noble,' she said under her breath.
Emma laughed. 'He had come to a better mind this morning,' she said; 'I found means whereby to tame his proud spirit.'
Eadgyth turned to her with a start, and wild visions of racks and thumbscrews, and other fashionable instruments of the time, passed through her mind. Her spirit was so torn with the terror of the day, and the excitement she had undergone, that she did not pause to consider probabilities. 'Emma! thou hadst not heart to crush one so unhappy?'
'I had!' said Emma.