They set off quietly, Geoffroy leading the horse, who with dilated nostrils snorted at the moonlight, the girls following him over the bridge; then he lifted his young wife into the saddle, sprang up himself behind her, and waving his hand to Aigleta, spurred his faithful charger on. It did not feel the weight it bore too heavy, for with the exception of his sword and dagger, Geoffroy had taken nothing with him but his father's song-book, and Garcinde only a few ornaments which she had inherited from her mother, and which her father had never touched. Thus, then, they rode through the moonlit forest. They did not say much: every now and then when the horse was slowly crossing boggy ground, she would turn half round to him, and then he kissed her cheek, and her black eyes smiled while she whispered, "My dearest husband." She rested in his arms so sweetly, and the good horse trod so securely, that they hardly realised their circumstances--a hasty flight by night--a dark future before them--but enjoyed their bliss as though no shadow of care and danger hung over their love. But when they got out of the wood and reached the hill from whence Garcinde a few days ago had first beheld again her father's castle, she suddenly pulled the rein and turned the horse round. "What ails thee, sweet wife? And why dost thou halt here?" asked Geoffroy. She did not reply, but gazed over the wide plain towards the dark pile with its leaden-roofed turrets that shone in the moonlight. "What is it that you see, dearest?" asked the youth, who felt her tremble on his breast, as though a frosty chill had overtaken her on the warm summer night. "Let us look forwards, not back. Our happiness lies before us." But she only shook her head sorrowfully, turned away when he wished to kiss her, and said not a word. All of a sudden she had seemed to see in the deserted castle her father with a taper in his hand wandering from room to room, and crying, "Where is my daughter Garcinde? I have pledged my honour, she must redeem my pledge. Where is my child, and where is my honour? I was a beggar. I had nothing but my unstained name, and now that is lost. The last of the Malaspina has destroyed the good fame of the house, for she knows that I can no longer pursue her as in former years I should have done. I am old and sick, and a sinful man. Now, therefore, I must go down disgraced to the grave, for mine enemy will say I have connived at this, and that to avoid paying my debt, I have preferred even to give my last jewel to a beggar, than to the creditor I hated!" Then again this image vanished, and she now saw herself and her lover pursued on strange roads by an angry band, Pierre de Gaillac at their head, resolved to claim his bride from her ravisher. She saw her Jaufret fight with the energy of a despairing man, and yet at length conquered by numbers, shed his life's blood on the green grass, and she heard the mocking conqueror laugh,