His deep sadness puzzled her, for his eyes were like the eyes of a man who strives to be patient when suffering inward pain. The tragedy of the Aspen Tower had left its shadow on him, and yet it could not explain to her the overmastering melancholy that seemed to humble his whole heart.
“I did my best to save the lad,” he said.
“Can I doubt that? No, no, you kept your promises almost too well. If they had hanged you for a traitor I should not have had the heart to look the world in the face again.”
“What would it have mattered?” and she saw that his bitterness was not assumed.
“Mattered? To lose the bravest man in Brittany, at the end of a rope!”
“Tiphaïne!”
“Did I not dream as a child that Bertrand du Guesclin would do great things. And now this Bertrand du Guesclin is proving the wisdom of my dreams.”
He looked at her so sadly, but with such an air of patient self-distrust, that it seemed that her praise was like wealth to a man dying of some inexorable disease.
“I am glad that I kept my promise,” he began, “and that you can think well of a man who but a year ago was not worthy to touch your hands.”
“But now?”