"Oh, why have you done this thing, Hellayne, why?—oh, why?"
Roger de Laval laughed viciously.
"It was indeed not to be expected that the Lady Hellayne would find her recalcitrant lover in the arms of the Lady Theodora."
With an inarticulate outcry of rage Tristan was about to hurl himself upon his opponent, had not Theodora placed a restraining hand upon him, while her dark eyes challenged Hellayne.
All the revulsion of his nature against this man rose up in him and rent him. All the love for Hellayne, which in these days had been floating on the wings of longing, soared anew.
But his efforts at vindication in this strangest of all predicaments were put to naught by the woman herself.
"Hear me, Hellayne—it is not true!" he cried, and paused with a choking sensation.
Hellayne stood as if turned to stone.
Then her eyes swept Tristan with a look of such incredulous misery that it froze the words that were about to tumble from his lips.
With a wail of anguish she turned and fled down the moonlit path like a hunted deer.