"I am claiming to be the friend of his daughter, seeing that I have learnt the very colour of her several girdles, the number and pattern of her gowns since I rode into Winchester." The venture in flattery was perhaps more suggestive than Igraine could have wished. "You must waste much time, my lord." "But little." "I am sorry I have so poor a wardrobe, that you have fathomed the whole of it in less than a month. To tell the truth, when I came into Winchester, I had only one gown, and that rather ragged." "They did not give you green and gold at Avangel?" "No, the good women wore grey to typify the colour of their souls." Gorlois laughed in his keen quiet fashion. The girl's eyes were wonderfully bright and subtle, and he had never seen such a splendour of hair. He longed to finger it, to let it run through his fingers like amber wine. Leaning one elbow on the stone back of the seat, and his head on his palm, he watched the silver comb rippling at its work, with a kind of dreamy complacency. The girl's voice broke out suddenly upon him. "My lord?" Gorlois attended. "You know many of the knights and gentlemen famed for arms in Britain?" "I may so boast myself." "I was once befriended, a piece of passing courtesy, yet I have always been curious to learn the character and estate of the man who did me this service. Have you heard of a knight named Pelleas?" Gorlois fingered his sharp-peaked black beard, and looked blankly irresponsive. "I have never known such a knight," he said. "Strange." "Never so. We men of the woods and moors often ride under false colours, sometimes to try our friends on the sly, sometimes to escape cognisance. The man who befriended you may have been Pelleas in your company." Igraine cut in with a laugh. "And Ambrosius at home," she said; "even Princes love masquerading in strange arms. Meadow-flower that I am, I have never seen the stately folk of the court--Ambrosius or Uther. I have heard Uther is an ugly man." "If strength makes a man ugly, Uther may claim ugliness." "Well?" "Picture a dark man with black hair, eyes packed away under heavy brows, a straight mouth, and a great clean-shaven jaw that looks sullen as death." "Not beautiful in words." Gorlois stretched his shoulders, and half yawned behind his hand. "Uther is a man with a conscience like a north wind," he said; "always lashing him into tremendous effort for the sake of duty. He has the head and neck of a lion, the grip of a bear. You have never known Uther till you have seen him in battle. Then he is like a mountain thundering down against a sea, a black flood plunging through a pine forest. A quaint, gentle, devilish, God-ridden madman; I can paint him no other way." Igraine laughed softly to herself. "A man worth seeing," she said. "I should judge so." "Tell me, is it true that Uther has gone into the wilds, and been seen of no man many days?"