"Fair words," she said to him; "you did not speak thus to me last eve."
"Ah!" he cried, beaming on her, "I was cold as a corpse; nor could I whine, for pride."
"And your shackles?"
He laughed and held up both hands; the wrists were chafed and bloody.
"It was ever a jest against me," he said, "that I had the hands of a woman, white and meagre, yet strong with the sword. Your fellows thrust a pair of wristlets on me fit for a Goliath, strong, but bulky. My hands have proved my salvation. I pulled them through while the guards diced, crept for a sword, gained it, and my freedom."
She nodded, and was not markedly dismal, though the wind had veered against her cause. The man with the grey eyes was a being one could not quarrel with with easy sincerity. Probably it did not strike her at the moment that this friendly argument with the man she had plotted to slay was a contradiction worthy of a woman.
The Lord of Avalon meanwhile had drawn still nearer to the girl upon the dais. His grey eyes had taken a warmer lustre into their depths, as though her beauty had kindled something akin to awe in his heart. He set the point of the sword on the floor, his hands on the hilt, and looked up at the white face medallioned in the black splendour of its hair.
"Madame," he said very gravely, "it is the way of the world to feel remorse when such an emotion is expedient, and to fling penitence into the bottomless pit when the peril is past. I shall prove to you that mine is no such April penitence. Here, on the cross of my sword, I swear to you a great oath. First, that I will build a chapel in Cambremont glade, and establish a priest there. Secondly, I will rebuild the tower, refit it royally, attach to it cottars and borderers from mine own lands. Lastly, mass shall be said and tapers burnt for your kinsfolk in every church in the south. I myself will do such penance as the Lord Bishop shall ordain for my soul."
The man was hotly in earnest over the vow--red as a ruby set in the sun. Yeoland looked down upon him with the glimmer of a smile upon her lips as he kissed the cross of the sword.
"You seem honest," she said to him.