Some couple of months later the ladies of the house-party assembled at Sangazure Castle for the Victory jousts were gathered in the great hall, exchanging gossip and serf-stories in the firelight while awaiting the return of their menkind.
"Hath any heard," lisped one fair young thing, "how fareth the Lord Œil-de-Veau? They tell me that some mysterious ailment hath him in thrall."
At the words the Lady Yolande Sangazure (whom we have met before) was aware of a crimson flood mounting swiftly to her exquisite temples. Strange to add, the same phenomenon might have been observed in a score of damosels belonging to the best families in the district. The hall seemed suffused in a ruddy glow that was certainly not reflected from the exiguous pile of post-Crusading fuel smouldering on the great hearth.
"Tush!" broke in the cracked voice of a withered old dame, "your news is old. Not only hath the so-called fever vanished but my lord himself hath followed it."
"Gone!" The cry was echoed by twenty voices; twenty embroidery-frames fell from forty arrested hands, while nine-and-thirty dismayed eyes fixed themselves upon the maliciously-amused countenance of the speaker. Only one, belonging to the Lady Beauregarde, who squinted slightly, remained as though unmoved by the general commotion.
"Moreover," continued the old dame, "report saith that with him went his leman, who, having some art in necromancy, transformed her beauty to the semblance of a witch and provided her own dowry by the sale, to certain addle-pated wenches, of charms for which her lover himself prepared the market."
"But—his fever?" an impetuous voice broke in.
"Cozening, no doubt. Of course the tale may be but idle babble; still, if true, one would admit that such credulous fools got no more than they deserved."
She ceased, well satisfied. "I fancy," observed the Lady Yolande coldly, "that I hear our lords returning." And in the eloquent silence a score of fair young minds slowly assimilated the profound truth (as fresh to-day as eight hundred years ago) that Satan finds some mischief still for the impecunious demobilised.