"Save that I loved the Lord Flavian, and that he is dead."
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
"Ah, you are avenged," she said, "you have crushed my heart; may the thought comfort you."
Her parched apathy seemed to elapse of a sudden, and she lost her calmness in an outburst of passion. She was athirst for solitude, to be cloistered from the rough cavil of the world. Colour glowed upon her sunken cheeks as she stretched out her arms to the man with a piteous vehemence.
"Ah, for God’s love, end now this mockery. Take this armour from me, for it burns my bosom. Let me go, that I may hide my wounds in peace."
"Peace!" he said, with a twinge of scorn.
"Fulviac, can you not pity me? I am broken and bruised, men stare and jeer. Oh, my God, only to be out of sight and alone!"
The man stood by the window looking out into the sky with lowering brows. The west burnt red above the house-tops; from the street came the noise of men marching.
"Do not kill yourself," he said with laconic brevity.
The man’s seeming scorn scourged her anguish to a shrill despair. The hot blood swept more swiftly through her worn, white body.
"Cursed be your ambition," she said to him; "must you torture me before the world?"
"As you will, madame; it will only make you look the greater fool."
He turned to her with the look of one enduring unuttered anguish in the spirit. His strong pride throttled passion, twisting his rough face into tragic ugliness.
"No, believe it not," he said; "I desire even for your heart’s sake that you should make the best of an evil fortune. Learn to smile again; pretend to a zest in life. I have fathomed hell in my grim years, and my words are true. Time loves youth and recovers its sorrow. Know this and ponder it: ’tis better to play the hypocrite than to suffer the world to chuckle over one’s tears."
The royal host had massed about the walls of Lauretia, and marched southwards to surprise Fulviac at St. Gore. Half the chivalry of the land had gathered under the standard of the King. Sir Simon of Imbrecour had come in from the west with ten thousand spears and five thousand bowmen. The Northerners under Morolt boasted themselves twoscore thousand men, and there were the loyal levies of the midland provinces to march under "The Golden Sun" upon the south. Never had such panoply of war glittered through the listening woods. Their march was as the onrush of a rippling sea; the noise of their trumpets as the cry of a tempest over towering trees.