"Ah," she said, "you think so? You are young. You have never loved. You are his daughter, not his wife. One day you shall know, if God is good to you!"
At this Joan smiled in her turn. She knew what she knew.
"You may think you know," returned Theresa, her calm eyes on the girl's face, "but what I mean by loving is another matter. The band you broke you did not make. I keep the vow I made. With clear eye, undulled brain, willing hand I made it—because he willed it. Let my son Maurice break it, if he can, if he will—as you have broken yours. Only let him never more call Theresa von Lynar mother!"
Joan rose to depart. Her intent had not been shaken, though she was impressed by the noble heart of the woman who had been her father's wife. But she also had vowed a vow, and that vow she would keep. The Sparhawk should yet be the Eagle of Kernsberg, and she, Joan, a home-keeping housewife nested in quietness, a barn-door fowl about the orchards of Isle Rugen.
"Madam," she said, "your word is your word. But so is that of Joan of Kernsberg. It may be that out of the unseen there may leap a chance which shall bring all to pass, the things which we both desire—without breaking of vows or loosing of the bands of obligation. For me, being no more than a daughter, I will keep Duke Henry's will only in that which is just!"
"And I," said Theresa von Lynar, "will keep it, just or unjust!"
Yet Joan smiled as she went out. For she had been countered and checkmated in sacrifice. She had met a nature greater than her own, and that with the truly noble is the pleasure of pleasures. In such things only the small are small, only the worms of the earth delight to crawl upon the earth. The great and the wise look up and worship the sun above them. And if by chance their special sun prove after all to be but a star, they say, "Ah, if we had only been near enough it would have been a sun!"
All the while Conrad sat very still, listening with full heart to that which it did not concern him to interrupt. But within his heart he said, "Woman, when she is true woman, is greater, worthier, fuller than any man—aye, were it the Holy Father himself. Perhaps because they draw near Christ the Son through Mary the Mother!"
But Theresa von Lynar sat silent, and watched the girl as she went down the long path, the leafy branches spattering alternate light and shadow upon her slender figure. Then she turned sharply upon Conrad.
"And now, my Lord Cardinal," she said, "what have you been saying to my husband's daughter?"