Chapter 11 - Page 2

to impose upon it."

"One can never tell," said Roger de Conde, "what manner of fool a man may be. When a man's head be filled with a pretty face, what room be there for reason ?"

"Soon thou wilt be a courtier, if thou keep long at this turning of pretty compliments," said the girl coldly; "and I like not courtiers, nor their empty, hypocritical chatter."

The man laughed.

"If I turned a compliment, I did not know it," he said. "What I think, I say. It may not be a courtly speech or it may. I know nothing of courts and care less, but be it man or maid to whom I speak, I say what is in my mind or I say nothing. I did not, in so many words, say that you are beautiful, but I think it nevertheless, and ye cannot be angry with my poor eyes if they deceive me into believing that no fairer woman breathes the air of England. Nor can you chide my sinful brain that it gladly believes what mine eyes tell it. No, you may not be angry so long as I do not tell you all this."

Bertrade de Montfort did not know how to answer so ridiculous a sophistry; and, truth to tell, she was more than pleased to hear from the lips of Roger de Conde what bored her on the tongues of other men.

De Conde was the guest of the Earl of Leicester for several days, and before his visit was terminated, the young man had so won his way into the good graces of the family that they were loath to see him leave.

Although denied the society of such as these throughout his entire life, yet it seemed that he fell as naturally into the ways of their kind as though he had always been among them. His starved soul, groping through the darkness of the empty past, yearned toward the feasting and the light of friendship, and urged him to turn his back upon the old life, and remain ever with these people, for Simon de Montfort had offered the young man a position of trust and honor in his retinue.

"Why refused you the offer of my father ?" said Bertrade to him as he was come to bid her farewell. "Simon de Montfort is as great a man in England as the King himself, and your future were assured did you attach your self to his person. But what am I saying ! Did Roger de Conde not wish to be elsewhere, he had accepted and, as he did not accept, it is proof positive that he does not wish to bide among the De Montforts."

"I would give my soul to the devil," said Norman of Torn, "would it buy me the right to remain ever at the feet of Bertrade Montfort."

He raised her hand to his lips in farewell as he started to speak, but something -- was it an almost imperceptible pressure of her little fingers, a quickening of her breath or a swaying of her body toward him ? -- caused him to pause and raise his eyes to hers.

For an instant they stood thus, the eyes of the man sinking deep into the eyes of the maid, and then hers closed and with a little sigh that was half gasp, she swayed toward him,