"The blame is mine, since I used the peril in which I stood to set a seal upon her lips. A true and loyal maid is your daughter, and it was only after she had twice said me nay that I resolved to take without the asking. So I came that day which we both remember, and waited under the alder bushes, and once again I missed my cast. Yet was the quest not altogether fruitless, for I carried away this token from my lady's hostile garden."
He drew a faded spray of the May-bloom from his doublet and touched it lightly to his lips.
"What gentleman could refuse to redeem so dear a pledge? You have seen how I took head in hand and sat me down under your own roof-tree, my good Gavan of the keep. Faith, it was an even chance on which side the platter would fall, but this time the luck was mine. We should have been leagues away in the sun's eye by now, only that a peevish boy would have his way."
"And this—this is also true?" said Sir Gavan, and it seemed that the preceding silence had been very long.
"It is true." She had answered quietly, almost mechanically, but the heart of the Lady Rayne thrilled to the new note in her child's voice.
"Issa!" she cried, softly, and fell to weeping, not as a mother for her daughter but as one woman who sorrows for another.
"Issa!" she said, again, but neither then nor thereafter did the girl vouchsafe her mother look or word, all her soul seeming to hang upon the will of the man who had brought this woe upon her house. There was no need for word to pass; reading the command in her lover's eyes, she slipped from her mother's detaining clasp and placed her hand in his. Now, Issa was exceeding fair to look upon, and Quinton Edge's blood stirred hotly within him. And so for once he lost his head and did a foolish thing (only that no woman would agree that it was foolish), for there, in the presence of all, he quickly drew her face to his and kissed her on the lips. Then turning to his men, he made as though to send them from the house.
But it was not to be. A keen-pointed, heavy throwing-knife hung at Sir Gavan's side. Without a word he snatched it from the sheath, poised and flung it with all his force at his enemy's heart, a master throw and executed like a flash of light. Issa felt rather than saw the coming of the missile, and with an instinctive movement contrived to interpose her own delicate body. The steel bit deep into the white flesh, and with a little, shuddering cry the girl sank to the floor; out leaped Quinton Edge's sword. Constans, supporting his mother, felt her hand grow cold in his. He laid her gently down upon a convenient settle and thanked God that she, too, was safe.
It seemed to Constans that he was wandering in a bristling thicket of steel points; thunderous crashes re-echoed in his ears; the red light from the burning building eddied about his feet, a sea of blood and flame. His father and Tennant were down, never to rise again; a few paces in front of him Guyder Touchett headed a little knot of the defenders, swearing furiously as he hewed and hacked. A half-dozen against ten times their number; the issue could not be doubtful. Even as he gazed, two of the six sunk to their knees and then fell face downward, a dreadful sign that even a child might understand.
Now, Guyder Touchett stood alone, and about him a snarling pack of Dom Gillian's wolves, waiting cautiously upon one another, for the Stockader had a long sword-arm. Thereupon a man broke out of the press, signing the prudent ones to fall back. It was Quinton Edge, and, as ever, he was laughing, only that now his laughter sounded like to a bell that has cracked in the ringing. The swords clashed together; then the Doomsman dropped his point.