more than I can.”

John the forester returned with a jug of cider, and bread and honey on a hollywood platter. Fulk bade him set the food and drink before Isoult. The fellow, none too sober, stumbled against the hearth curb, and spilt half the cider.

Fulk struck him across the shoulders with half of the broken bow.

“Sot! Vanish—get out of my sight!”

When the man had gone he turned to Isoult, frowning:

“A man who cannot rule his body is no better than a beast. Eat.”

She took bread, and spread the honey with her girdle knife, nothing but the point of her chin showing under the shadow of her hood.

“Lording,” she said, “you are very masterful. Do you rule your men as you rule your dogs?”

“It serves. A cur is a villein; a hound a gentleman.”

She took the jug and drank.

“So! We are all dogs, if not of the same litter. And some of us are hated. What do the people sing now:

He looked down at her, as from a height.

“A fool’s ditty. Will you ask me to prove that a hart royal is no better than a rooting hog? A scullion’s forbears were scullions: that’s the sense of’t.”

She held out the loaf to him.

“Will you not eat?”

“I eat but twice a day.”

“Proud, even over a platter. Oh, my good bachelor, you will not be long-lived!”

When she had eaten, Fulk took a rushlight, lit it at the torch, and stood waiting. Isoult rose and followed him to the door of the store-room that opened out of a passage leading from the hall. He gave her the rushlight, and their fingers touched.

“Cold hand, Messire Fulk, hot heart.”

He said nothing, but waited for her to enter, and then locked the door after her and took the key.

Fulk slept in the hall that night on a deer-skin spread upon a bed of bracken, and so little had the feminine temper of the adventure stirred him that he slept till five of the clock, when he was wakened by John the forester opening the shutters.

“A touch of frost, master, but a fine morning. Peter of the Purlieus has been watching the Pippinford rides. He was to meet me at Stonegate two hours after sunrise.”

Fulk was still sleepy.

“Yes, get along. Take a couple of hounds and your quarterstaff, and blow three notes if you see aught that is strange.”

The forester started out, and Fulk dozed off again till he woke to the sound of someone singing. For the moment he had almost forgotten the woman in yonder, and to judge by her matins she was in a mood with the birds.

He sat up just as the solar door opened, and a grey figure appeared at the top of the wooden stairway leading down into the hall. The figure had paused, as though listening, its eyes fixed upon Fulk seated on the deer-skin where the morning sunlight poured in upon the floor.

“Fulk!”

“Mother!”

Margaret Ferrers came down slowly into the hall. She was clad all in grey, her head wrapped in a starched white wimple, a cold figure with cold eyes. Her face was as passionless as the face of one lying dead in a shroud, nostrils and lips thin and compressed, the skin bloodless and opaque. This woman had the air of having left her soul behind her somewhere in the past, but this morning her eyes were alert and mistrustful, her face as sharp and pinched as on a bitter winter morning. Isoult was still singing, and with such abandonment that the words could be heard in the hall:

Margaret Ferrers asked no questions. She stood, waiting, like the ghost in the tale forbidden by pride to speak until spoken to. Fulk sprang up, the impetuous youth in him missing the look in his mother’s eyes.

“Listen to the caged bird singing. I caught it last night under the Witch Cross yews.”

“A woman?”

“Stalking a hart by moonlight, with a bow in her hand. I locked her in the store-room for the night.”

Margaret Ferrers still considered him with her mistrustful eyes.

“A woman!”

“Who calls herself Isoult of the Rose. Jade or lady, she goes before the verderers at the next swainmote. We shall have to lodge her here.”

His mother was wondering whether she should believe him. They came to all men, these adventures, and yet he carried it off like a boy who had brought home a snared rabbit.

“Who is she? Whence does she come?”

“I know no more than Father Adam. Some gay dame, perhaps, tired of her bower, and come adventuring. She tried to fool me.”

Margaret Ferrers listened to the singing voice.

“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.