"Goodman in the red doublet," quoth he, "when you have stared your fill at me, I will ask you to read me the moral of this fable." Fulviac stroked his chin with the air of a man who holds an adversary at some subtle disadvantage. "Messire," he said, "address yourself to madame--here; you are her affair in the main." The Warden of the Southern Marches bowed as by habit. His grey eyes reverted to Yeoland’s face, searching it with a certain courteous curiosity that took her beauty for its justification. The woman was an enigma to him, a most magical sphinx whose riddle taunted his reason. "Madame," he began. The girl stiffened in her chair at the word. "You hold me at a disadvantage, seeing that I am ignorant of sin or indiscretion against you. If it is a question of gold----" "Messire!" He swept her exclamation suavely aside and ran on mellifluously. "If it is a question of gold, let me beseech you to be frank with me. I will covenant with you instanter. My seneschal at Gambrevault will unbolt my coffers, and ease your greed. Pray be outspoken. I will renounce the delight of lodging here for a purse of good rose nobles." There was the faintest tinge of insolence in the man’s voice, an insolence that exaggerated to the full the charge of plunder in his words. Whether he hinted at blood money or no, there was sufficient poison in the sneer to fire the brain and scorch the heart to vengeance. The woman had risen from her chair, and stood gripping the carved woodwork with a passion that set her arms quivering like bands of tightened steel. The milk-white calm had melted from her face. Wrath ran riot in her blood. So large were her pupils that her eyes gleamed red. "Ha, messire, I bring you to justice, and you offer me gold." The man stared; his eyes did not quail from hers. "Justice, madame! Of what sin then am I accused? On my soul, I know not who you are." She calmed herself a little, shook back her hair from her shoulders, fingered her throat, breathing fast the while. "My name, messire? Ha, you shall have it. I am Yeoland, daughter of that Rual of Cambremont whom you slaughtered at the gate of his burning house. I--am the sister of those fair sons whom you did to death. Blood money, forsooth! God grant, messire, that you are in honest mind for heaven, for you die to-night." The man had bent to catch her words. He straightened suddenly like a tree whose throat is loosed from the grim grip of the wind. He went grey as granite, flushed red again as a dishonoured girl. The words had touched him with the iron of truth. "Hear me," he said to her. "Ah, you would lie." "By Heaven, no; give me an hour’s justice." "Murderer." "Before God, you wrong me." He stood with twitching lips, shackled hands twisting one within the other. For the instant words eluded him, like fruit jerked from the mouth of a thirst-maddened Tantalus. Anon, his manhood gathered in him, rushed forth redly like blood from a stricken throat.