Now let me go hence."
He took her in his brawny arms. "Fit mate for me," he said. "Little
vixen, had you done otherwise I would have devoted you to the devil."
Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that
her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with that
queer touch of fanatic gravity: "My dear, you are perfectly right. I was
tempted, I grant you. But it was never reasonable that gentlefolk should
cheat at their dicing. Therefore I whispered Roger Bulmer my final
decision; and he is now loosing all my captives in the courtyard of
Mezelais, after birching the tails of every one of them as soundly as
these infants' pranks to-night have merited. So you perceive that I do
not profit by my trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to
come to you with hands--well! not intolerably soiled."
"Oh, now I love you!" she cried, a-thrill with disappointment to find
him so unthriftily high-minded. "Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is
a king's ransom."
He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so
that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his
stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek.
Pages:
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122