“Because then Monseigneur will be our lord and we will be his serfs.”
“You would like to be my serf, Yvonne?” he demanded, putting his hand on her shoulder, and he could feel her tremble.
“Surely, surely,” she answered.
“Then you shall—some day you shall, I swear it.”
A gust of hot passion swept over him. She was not pretty, this peasant wench, but she had a noble figure, and the comfort of a woman’s caress in that hour of abasement appealed with an irresistible sweetness to his wounded spirit. Something, however, checked his arm that was about to slip round her—as if Yvonne herself by a mysterious power paralysed his passion. Yet she made no effort to escape, and under his hand on her plump shoulder he could feel that she, too, was in the grip of strong emotion.
His arm dropped to his side.
“Monseigneur will go to the wise soothsayer,” she said very quietly, “for she can help him better than any peasant wench.”
And then André laughed. The gaiety of yesterday had suddenly remastered him. He forgot the shamed sword, the Chevalier, and that infernal court with its smoking torches. Denise should yet be his, and this strange girl his serf.
“Why, then, I will seek this wise woman,” he answered lightly, “before I go to the war. I promise, Yvonne.”
And so he left her to her prayers at the tomb of the child who should have been her lord. But she did not pray very long. Indeed, had André cared he might have seen her wrapped in her coarse cloak walking swiftly towards the twinkling lights of the great château, and she sang as she had sung on the back of her spotted cow.