The Abbot, whose offices were finished, had also heard the drawbridge chains and let him go.
When Philip saw Clotilde he frowned and then smiled. He had sons, but no daughter, and he would have set her on his shoulder. But she drew away haughtily.
So Philip sat in a chair and watched her with a curious smile playing about his lips. Surely it were enough to make him smile, that he should play host to the wife and daughter of his cousin Charles.
Because of that, and of the thing that he had prayed for, and with a twinkle in his eyes, Black Philip alternately watched the child, and from a window the plain which was prepared against his cousin. And, as he had expected, at ten o'clock in the morning came Charles and six men-at-arms, riding like demons, and jerked up their horses at the edge of the moat.
Philip, still with the smile under his black beard, went out to greet them.
"Well met, cousin," he called; "you ride fast and early."
Charles eyed him with feverish eyes.
"Truce of God," he said, sulkily, from across the moat. And then: "We seek a runaway, the child Clotilde."
"I shall make inquiry," said Philip, veiling the twinkle under his heavy brow. "In such a season many come and go."
But in his eyes Charles read the truth, and breathed with freer breath.