"Is she your daughter, you dog, and do you speak thus of your daughter?" cried Prosper in a fury.
"Sir," said the man, "who would own himself father to a witch?
Nevertheless she is my daughter indeed."
"What is the meaning of all this? Would you have me marry a witch, old fool?" Prosper shouted at him. The man shrugged.
"Nay, sir, but I said it was marriage for choice—seeing the friar was to hand. We know their way, to marry as soon as look at you. But it's as you will, so you get a title to her, to take her out of the country."
Prosper turned to look at Isoult. He saw her standing before the board, her head hung and her two hands clasped together. Her breathing was troubled—that also he saw. "God's grace!" thought he to himself, "is she so fair without and within so rotten? Who has been ill-ordering the world to this pass?" He watched her thoughtfully for some time; then he turned to her father.
"See now, old scamp," he said, "I have sworn an oath to high God to succour the weak, to right wrong, and to serve ladies. Nine times under the moon I sware it, watching my arms before the cross on Starning Waste. Judge you, therefore, whether I intend to keep it or not. As for your daughter, she can tell you whether some part of it I have not kept even now. But understand me, that I do not marry on compulsion or where love is not. For that were a sin done toward God, and me, and a maid."
The old rascal blinked his eyes, jerking his head many times at the shameful girl. Then he said, "Love is there fast and sure. She is all for loving. They call her Isoult la Desirous, you must know."
"Yes," said Prosper, "I do know it, for she has told me so already.'
"And to-morrow she will desire no more, since she will be hanged," said
Matt-o'-the-Moor.
Prosper started and flushed, and—