“Some light wench,” she thought; but to her son she said, “Give me the key, Fulk. I may find out more than a man could.”
He gave her the key without demur, and leaving her to visit Isoult of the Rose, he passed out into the courtyard and washed in the great stone trough under the pump.
Dame Margaret approached the matter with all the uncharitableness of a woman who once in her life had stood in bitter need of the world’s charity. Her face seemed to grow thinner and sharper from the moment that she set eyes upon Isoult. The claws of a woman’s jealous instinct tore all fripperies aside, and laid bare the sinful body that good women imagine they see under richly coloured clothes.
Isoult was no less instantly upon her guard. She looked slantwise at Dame Margaret, holding her head high, and seeing in the grey and blighting figure mistrust, arrogance, and scorn.
“The day’s blessing on you, madame.”
Isoult chose to speak in the French tongue, mincingly yet railingly, with a gleam far back in her dark eyes. She spoke Breton French, and spoke it fluently, and with a little mischievous lilt that had the sparkle of fine wine. This solemn flapping heron was to be stooped at and struck with the talons, for Margaret Ferrers’ eyes had thrown out the one word that is unforgivable and not to be forgotten.
“I am in love with this fair chamber. It is good to smell the spicery, and the herbs, and the salted meat. Madame, it is through no wish of mine that messire, your son, has inflicted me upon you. But he was so obstinate in holding what he had taken!”
Margaret Ferrers looked her up and down with glances that slashed the gay clothes to ribbons. She had nothing pleasant to say to Isoult, and being the woman she was she said all that was unpleasant.
“Let us understand each other. Some of us go in our proper colours. My house is not an intake, though it must serve as a jail. Have you anything you wish to say?”
Isoult’s eyes glittered.