“To what purpose should I have made such a confession, even if it were the fact?”
“To the purpose of truth, if for nothing else. God’s sake, man, is it thus you love in France! Cold Scotland can be in that your tutor. In your place, there had been a quick divorce between my sword and scabbard. Were my rival twenty times a king, I’d face him out and say, by Cupid’s bow, return or fight.”
“What! This in your castle to your guest?” exclaimed Talbot.
“No, perhaps not. You are in the right, constable, you are in the right. I had forgotten your situation for the moment. I should have been polite to him within my own walls, but I should have followed him across my marches and slit his gullet on the king’s highway.”
Notwithstanding his distraction of mind the newcomer smiled somewhat wanly at the impetuosity of the other.
“You must remember that while your foot presses French soil, you are still the guest of all true Frenchmen, nevertheless your majesty’s words have put new life into my veins. Did you see Mary of Vendôme?”
“Yes, and there is not three months’ life left to her unless she draws vitality from your presence. Man, man, why stand you here idling? Climb walls, force bolts, kidnap the girl and marry her in spite of all the world.”
“Alas, there is not a priest in all France would dare to marry us, knowing her pledged to your majesty.”
“Priests of France! I have priests in my own train who will, at a word from me, link you tighter than these stones are cemented together. God’s will, Talbot, these obstacles but lend interest to the chase.”
“Is it possible that you, having opportunity, care not to marry Mary of Vendôme?” cried the amazed young man, who could not comprehend that where his preference fell another might be indifferent; for she was, as he had said, the Pearl of France to him, and it seemed absurd to imagine that she might not be so to all the world.