"But yet you told him how he should love you?"
"Nay, lord, but I told him how I should love."
"You must have studied much in this science, my child."
"I am Isoult la Desirous, lord."
Prosper turned away. There was much here that he did not understand, and that night before he went to sleep at her door he kissed her forehead—it would have been her hand if his dignity had dared—and then they prayed together as once in the forest.
Afterwards he was glad enough to remember this.
CHAPTER XIX
LADY'S LOVE
For, notwithstanding all that Isoult could urge (which was very little indeed), Prosper started next morning with a dozen men to scour the district for Maulfry. He refused point blank to take the girl with him, and after her rebuke and abasement of the night before, still more after the reconciliation on knees, she dared not plead overmuch. He was a man and a great lord; she could not suppose that she knew all his designs—any of them, if it came to that. He must go his way—which was man's way—and she must stop at High March nursing her heart—which was woman's way—even if High March proved a second Gracedieu and Isabel a more inexorable Maulfry. No act of her own, she resolved, should henceforward lead her to disobey him. Ah! she remembered with a hot flush of pain—ah! her disobedience at Gracedieu had brought all the mischief, Vincent's death all the anguish. Of course it had not; of course Maulfry had tricked her; but she was not the girl to spare herself reproaches. Her loyalty to Prosper took her easily the length of stultification.
So Prosper went; and it may be some consolation to reflect that his going pleased fourteen people at least. First it pleased the men he took with him; for Prosper, that born fighter, was never so humorous as when at long odds with death. Fighting seemed a frolic with him for captain; a frolic, at that, where the only danger was that in being killed outright you would lose a taste of the certain win for your side. For among the High March men there was already a tradition—God knows how these things grow—that Prosper le Gai and the hooded hawk could not be beaten. He was so cheerful, victory so light a thing. Then his cry—Bide the time—could anything be more heartening? Rung out in his shrill tones over the open field, during a night attack, say, or called down the darkening alleys of the forest, when the skirmishers were out of each other's sight and every man faced a dim circle of possible hidden foes? Pest! it tied man to man, front to rear. It tied the whole troop to the brain of a young demon, who was never so cool as when the swords were flying, and most wary when seeming mad. Blood was a drink, death your toast, at such a banquet. And that accounts for twelve out of fourteen.