“I have no love for the convent women,” he said, “and there—I am out of fashion.”
Marpasse saw the worldly side of the picture, and smoothed away a smile.
“Then you would make them man and wife, Father if the chance offered?”
“Against all the monkish law in the kingdom,” he said stoutly; “we put no vows on her when she had her cell up yonder. And some of the folk here would have been burnt for her if she had asked it. Only that lewd dog of a Gascon——Well, we broke their teeth at Lewes.”
Marpasse stared solemnly into the fire as though looking for pictures amid the blaze of the burning wood.
“If Denise could only forget a year,” she said.
Grimbald nodded wisely.
“God wastes nothing,” he answered; “those who never suffer, never learn.”
Aymery slept the whole night, and woke soon after dawn with a rush of memories like clouds over a March sky. He found Grimbald sitting by his bed. Grimbald was dozing, but his eyes opened suddenly and looked straight at Aymery like the eyes of an altar saint in the dimness of the room.
The first word that Aymery uttered was the name of Denise.