'In sooth the wounds were sore, but of danger there was little,' answered the earl. Then he sprang up from the couch into a sitting posture with a suddenness that startled his gentle leech. 'They deem me crushed,' he said. 'So flushed are they by their victory that they are careless to pursue it further. I found no trace of their troops as I dragged wearily to Norwich. They have gone west, I deem it, to deal with thy brother.' 'Alas, my poor Roger! I would we had news of him,' said the countess, her face drawn with pain. De Guader caught the change in her face with jealous quickness. The old haunting fear came back lest she should scorn the broken man. 'Emma, my defeat is dire! Dost thou credit how I have come back to thee,--hiding behind bush and briar, beaten, poverty-stricken, all but alone? I, who left thee at the head of a noble army, now scattered like chaff before the winds! Dost thou not spurn me?' The daughter of William Fitzosbern looked in the face of the man she had chosen for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse. 'My knight,' she said, 'hadst thou come maimed of a hand and foot, with thy visage marred for ever and a day by the cruel daggers of thy foes, as hath happened to thy favourite squire, Stephen le Hareau, I had but loved thee the better.' 'By the Holy Rood! has Stephen le Hareau been so foully entreated?' 'Alack, yes! Moreover, he bore a message from the king's men, that every prisoner, of whatever rank and whatever nation, they might take in this struggle, should lose his right foot.' The earl raised himself from the couch and smote his knee with his balled fist. 'By the bones of St. Nicholas, I will avenge them! I will yet prevail.' He turned to Emma, fiercely seizing her hands again in his, this time with no very tender grip. 'Hast thou courage? Wilt thou help me now in my sore need, or is thine heart half with William? Say me sooth!' 'It is with thee!--all with thee!' 'God bless thee for that answer!' He passed his hand across his eyes, and then held his brow as if in pain. 'That accursed shaveling's mace! Sith he cracked my poor head with it, whenever I try to think I get a pang instead of a notion.' 'Strive not to think, mine own. Rest awhile. Where shouldst thou rest if not here in thine home, or when, if not after dire fatigue?' 'No, Emma! no rest for me till I have retrieved mine honour! Stephen le Hareau, thou saidest? He fought like a Paladin beside me. The smartest squire in my following, and the best born. I so loved the lad that I would have had him squire to mine own body, but that Sir Guy de Landerneau was as a father to him, and had formed him in all fitting a man-at-arms. Sir Guy dead too! Yet death is But the soldier's portion, it irks me not. 'Tis that the fiends should mutilate one of Le Hareau's gentle blood. It beggars credence! Their own leader is of such proud lineage. Ha, ha!'