"The spears only, as God sees me!" he answered firmly. "For without these I could enjoy not the smallest of those. Without these, of which you, beautiful fool, have robbed me--robbing me therewith of my last chance--I take no farm nor smallest mill, nor hold one groat of that I have won! Do you think, my girl," he continued grimly, "that I was not pressed when I gave up your lips and your kisses for that child's company? Do you think it was for a whim, a fancy, a light thing that I turned my back on you and your smiles, and at risk sought a puling girl, when I could have had you without risk? Bah! I tell you it was not to gain, but to hold--because he had no other choice and no other way--it was not for love but for life, that the King went to his Mass! And I to mine!" "All this I thought," she said quietly. She was no longer afraid of him. "You thought it?" "I knew it." "You knew it? You knew, madam," he repeated, his face darkening, "on what a narrow edge I stood, and you dashed away my one holdfast?" "To replace it by another," she replied, her figure welling with confidence. "I tell you, sir, I come not to you empty-handed, if I come unasked. I bring my dowry." He eyed her gloomily. "It should be a large one," he muttered, "if it is to take the place of that I have lost." "It is a large one," she answered. "But," with a change to gentleness, "do me credit. I have not puled nor wept. I have uttered no cry, I have made no complaint. But I have righted myself, doing what not one woman in a hundred would have dared to do! I have wit that has tricked you, and courage that has not quailed before you. And henceforward I claim to be no puppet for your play, no doll for your dull hours! But your equal, my lord, and your mate; deepest in your counsels, the heart of your plans, your other brain, your other soul! Make me this, hold me thus--close to you, and---- "Is that the thing you bring me?" he said, with sarcasm. Yet she had moved him. "No!" She fell a little from her height, she looked appeal. "My dowry is different. But say first, sir, I shall be this!" "Bring me the spears," he answered, his eyes gleaming, "and you shall be that and more. Bring me the spears, and----" He made as if he would take her forcibly in his arms. She recoiled, but her eyes shone. "I am yours," she said, "when you will! Do you not know it? But, for the present, listen. I have a husband, but I have also a lover. A lover of whom"--she continued more slowly, marking with joy how he started at the word--"my lord and master has no need to be jealous. He has not touched of me more than the tips of my fingers; yet if I raise but those fingers he has spears and to spare--five hundred and five hundred to that!--and I have but to play the laggard a little, and dangle a hope, and they dance to my piping." He understood. A deep flush tinged the brown of his lean face. "You have brought," he said, "the Duke to parley."