The girl’s blue eyes were staring hard into the man’s grey ones. There was little chance of prevarication before so blunt a question, and Brastias’s courtesy, like Balaam’s ass, refused to deny the scrutiny of truth. Igraine could read the man’s face like a piece of blazened parchment.
“Never fear to be frank,” she said; “your belief hangs on your face like an alphabet, and that shows me how much you know of a woman’s heart.”
“Pardon me, madame.”
“Never blush, man, you would have said that I had as little love for Gorlois as for the dirtiest beggar in Caerleon?”
Brastias frowned mildly and agreed with her, remembering as he did a certain wild scene on the battlements of Tintagel.
“And doubtless you would say that it pained me not a whit to see Gorlois my lord ride out from Caerleon into the wilds of Wales?”
There was such reproach in her voice that Brastias fell into confusion before her eyes, reddened, and began to excuse himself.
“Your ladyship’s behaviour,” he said, with an ingenuous look and an intense striving after propitiation,—“your ladyship’s behaviour would hardly warrant me in believing that my Lord Gorlois was vastly dear to you. And, pardon me, a woman does not seek to run away from her husband.”
“You insinuate—”