However, the countess set her woman's wit to weigh these quarrelsome gentlemen against each other, and managed to do it, owing to the three-sidedness of the situation.
After all, their want of unity had its advantages, as they never 'went solid' in any direction, except under the self-evident necessity of defending their lives and the castle.
Still, at times, Emma grew very weary, and almost failed under the burden she had taken upon her slender shoulders, feeling terribly feeble and lonely and out of her depth.
Sir Hoël de St. Brice was her chiefest comfort and principal counsellor. The old knight had come to regard her with absolute veneration and the deepest affection, and in him she felt that she had a true and sincere friend.
His zeal for the earl's cause nearly equalled her own. To say that he would have given his life for it would express little, for all in the garrison were formally pledged to do that; but he had no other object in life.
Emma had sought the earliest opportunity to tell him the circumstances under which she had discovered the imprisonment of Sir Aimand de Sourdeval, and to repeat his account of the foul treatment he had met with from De Gourin.
'Unknightly!' he had said,—'from first to last unknightly. But what would you have? Can a man who sells his lance to the first bidder, without inquiry into the justice of his cause, be a true knight?' Altogether he gave evidence of shrewd indignation, but no keen surprise.
'I love not the mercenary,' he answered, 'and wish that he had not so high a command in the garrison. I know well that he had no great liking for the young Norman prudhomme, whose boyish enthusiasms were stronger than his prudence, and led him to throw taunts at Sir Alain's thick head, all the more galling that they were barbed with truth.'
But he agreed that, under the circumstances, it was best to let matters stand; De Gourin was evidently of the same opinion, and, save for a few veiled gibes at the magnanimity of the countess, made no reference to the freeing of the young knight.
Sir Aimand, for his part, had a dismal time of it, and almost wished himself back in his dungeon, securely chained by the leg.