He turned his head and looked at her.
"Must I go then to Gilderoy?"
"The road is open," he answered, with no obvious kindling of his sympathy; "there will be bloody work here anon; you will be safer behind stone walls."
"And the King?" she asked him.
He straightened suddenly, like a man tossing some great burden from off his soul.
"Ha, girl! are you blind as to what shall follow? Richard of the Iron Hand waits for us with fivescore thousand men. We shall fight--by God, yes!--and make a bloody end; there will be much slaughter and work for the sword. The King will crush us as a falling rock crushes a scorpion. There will be no mercy. Death waits. Put on that cloak of thine."
She stood motionless a moment, listening to the moaning of the wind. The man's grim spirit troubled her. She remembered that he had bulwarked her in her homeless days, had dealt her much pity out of his rugged heart. He was alone now, and shadowed by death. Thus it befell that she cast the cloak aside upon the bed, and stood forward with quivering lips before the fire.
"Fulviac."
"Little sister."
"Ah! God pardon me; I have been a weak and graceless friend. You have been good to me, beyond my gratitude. The past has gone for ever; what is left to me now? Shall I not meet death at your side?"