“Heart of mine, is it you in the flesh, my dear? Why, we left you for dead, Sir Aymery and I! And mightily gloomy he was too, poor lording. To think of it, that I should fall on you in the middle of a wood, while I was chasing an old sow!”
Though she was very voluble, Marpasse’s eyes were scanning Denise as one looks at a friend after a long sickness. Marpasse’s eyes were very quick. She could have told the number of wrinkles on Denise’s face, had there been any. But Marpasse saw something there much more sinister than wrinkles.
“Well, sister,” said she, “here is indeed a miracle. But I am not so strong as the lord on the black horse, so please to sit on the grass and let me get my breath. Now for the story. How did St. Helena and all the saints heal you, and how do you come to be here?”
Denise slipped aside from Marpasse, and sat down at the foot of the tree. It was a hard, brooding look about her eyes that had struck Marpasse. Things had not gone with pious facility. Marpasse could tell that by Denise’s silence, and by the half-sullen expression of her face.
“Your knife turned between my ribs, Marpasse,” she said, “I was a fool to bungle so easy a stroke; I had only to lie still, eat and sleep.”
Marpasse clapped her hands.
“This is gratitude, and I swaddled you up like a baby! How is it that you are not still lying abed, and eating and sleeping? You look thin, eh, and what does Sir Black Horse know about it all? Lord, but what a lot of running away you have done in your life! So you fell out with the pious folk, was that it? I could never abide the smell of a nun.”
She pinched Denise’s cheek, watching her narrowly, for Marpasse had learnt to use her wits, and the philosophy that she had learnt upon the road.
“Well, my dear, what happened?”
“I ran away.”