"Soon after your flight the Lady Hellayne departed, without a word." "So you were pleased to inform me." "I was not pleased," spat out Laval. "How do you explain her flight?" "I do not explain, my lord. I have not seen or heard from the Lady Hellayne since I left Avalon." "Then you still aver the lie?" Tristan raised himself to his full height. "I am speaking truth, my lord. Why, indeed, should she have left you without even a word?" Roger eyed the man before him as a cat eyes a captured bird at a foot's distance of mock freedom. "Why, indeed, save for love of you?" Tristan raised his hands. "Deep in my heart and soul I worship the Lady Hellayne," he said. "For me she had but friendship. Else were I not here!" "A sainted pilgrim," sneered the Count, "in the Groves of Enchantment. And for such a one she left her liege lord." His mocking laughter resounded through the ruins. "You wrong the Lady Hellayne and myself. Of myself I will not speak. As concerns her--" "Of her you shall not speak! Save to tell me her abode." "Of her I shall speak," Tristan flashed. "You are insulting your wife--" "Take care lest worse befall yourself," snarled Laval, advancing towards the object of his wrath. Tristan's look of contempt cut him to the quick. "You think to bully me as you bully your menials," he said quietly. "I do not fear you!" "Why, then, did you leave Avalon, if it was not fear that drove you?" drawled Laval, his eyes a mere slit in the face, drawn and white. The utter baseness and conceit in the speaker's nature were so plainly revealed in his utterance that Tristan replied contemptuously: "It was not fear of you, my lord, but the Lady Hellayne's expressed desire that brought me to Rome." "The Lady Hellayne's desire? Then it was she who feared for you?" "It was not fear for my body, but my soul." "Your soul? Why your soul?" "Because my love for her was a wrong to you, my lord,--even though I loved her but in thought."-- "On that night in the garden--you embraced in thought?" The leer had deepened on the speaker's face. "A resistless something impelled--" "And you a fair and pleasant-featured youth, beside Roger de Laval--her husband. And now you are here doing penance at the shrines, at the Lady Theodora's shrine?" "What I am doing in Rome does not concern you, my lord," Tristan interposed firmly. "I did not attend the Lady Theodora's feast of my own choice--" "Nor were you in her pavilion of your own choice. Yet a pinch more of penance will set that right also." "I take it, my lord, that I have satisfied your anxiety," Tristan replied, as he started to pass the other. Laval caught him roughly by the shoulder. "Not so fast," he cried. "I shall inform you when I have done with you--"