At Tortsentier there was very little daylight, because the trees about it formed a thick wall. The branches of the pines tapped at the windows on one side; on the other they linked arms with their comrades, and so stood for a mile on all sides of the tower. Paths there were none, nor ways to come by unless you were free of the place. The winter storms moaned, lashed themselves above it, yet below were hushed down to a long sighing. The quiet visitations of the snow, the dripping of the autumn rains, the sun's force, the trap-bite of the frost, or that new breath that comes stealing through woodlands in spring, were all strangers alike to the carpet of brown needles about Maulfry's hold. No birds ever sang there. Death and a great mystery, the dark, air like a lake's at noon, kept fur and feather from Tortsentier, and left Maulfry alone with what she had.

Within, it was a spacious place. A great hall ran the whole height (although not the whole area) of it, having a gallery midway up whence you gained what other chambers there were. Below the gallery were deep alcoves hung with tapestry (of which Maulfry was a diligent worker), and thickened with curtains; between every alcove hung trophies of shields and arms. Mossy carpets, skins, and piled cushions were on the floor; the place smelt of musk: it was lighted by coloured torches and lamps, and warmed with braziers. It was by a spiral stair that you found the gallery and doors of the other rooms, or as many of them as it was fitting you should find. There were doors there which were no doors at all unless occasion served. These rooms had windows; but the hall had only a lantern in the roof, and its torches. From all this it will appear that Isoult was a prisoner, since a prisoner you are if, although you can go out, there is nowhere for you to go; if, further, your hostess neither goes out herself nor gives you occasion to leave her. Yet Maulfry made her guest elaborately free of the place.

"Child," she said, "you see how I live here. My trees, my birds—" she had many birds in cages—"my collections of arms and arras and odd books, are my friends for want of better. If you can help me to any such I shall be very much obliged to you. Other friends I have—yourself I may count among them, one other you know,—but they are of the world, and refuse to hang upon my walls. Sometimes they pay me a visit, stay for a little season, remonstrate, argue with me, shrug, and leave me gladder than I was to receive them. I am a hermit, my child, when all's said. These other friends, these more constant friends, on the other hand, suit me better. They talk to me when I bid them, are silent when I want to think. They have no vapours, unless I give them of mine, no airs but what I choose to find in them. And they are complaisant, they seek nothing beyond my entertainment. My friends from outside come to please themselves and to take what they can of my store. Sometimes they take each other. One of them (not unknown to my Isoult!) will come before long—he is overdue now—and find my store enriched. I doubt he will turn thief. You may well blush, child, for, apart that it becomes you admirably, thieving is a sin, and naturally you cannot approve of it. It is to be hoped he has rifled no treasury already. There, there, I have your word for it; but you know my way! Living alone in the woods at a distance from men, which makes them ants in a swarm for me, I become a philosopher. Can you wonder?"

To such harangues, delivered with a pretty air of mockery and extravagance, which was never allowed to get out of hand, Isoult listened as she had listened to the cheerful prophetics of the Abbess of Gracedieu, with her gentle smile and her locked lips. Maulfry talked by the hour together while she and Isoult sat weaving a tapestry. For the philosopher which it seemed she was, the subject of the piece was very pleasant. It was the story of Troilus and Cresseide, no less, wherein Sir Pandarus, (departing from the custom) was represented a young man of tall and handsome presence, and the triangle of lovers like children. Diomede was an apple-cheeked school-boy, Troilus had a tunic and bare legs, Cresseide in her spare moments dandled a doll. Calchas, for his part, kept a dame-school in this piece, which for the rest was treated with a singular freedom. Isoult, poor girl, was occasionally troubled at her part of the work; but the philosopher laughed heartily at her.

"What ails thee with the piece, child?" she would cry out in her hearty way. "Dost thou think lovers are men and women, to be taken seriously? It is to be hoped they are not, forsooth! For if they are not innocent, what shall be said of their antics?" and more to the same tune.

While affecting to treat her with freedom, Maulfry kept in reality a steady rein.

"Go out?" she would cry in mock dismay, at the least hint of such a wish from the girl—"why under the sun should we go out? To see a thicket of twigs and breathe rotten vapours? Or do you think we have processions passing in and out of the tree-trunks? Ah, minx, 'tis a procession of one you would be spying for! Nay, nay, never look big eyes at me, child. I know your processioner better than you. He will come in his time; and whether he come through the door or down the stairs I cannot tell you yet. Who taught you, pray, that he was in the wood? Not I, I vow. Why should he not be skulking in the blue alcove awaiting the hour? You look thither; how you kindle at a word! Well, well, go and see for yourself if he is in the blue alcove."

Poor trembling Isoult went on tiptoe, was fool enough to peep through the curtains, but good soul enough to take Maulfry's railing in fair part. She got as much as she deserved, and the joke was none too good perhaps; but as a trick, it sufficed to keep her on the fine edge of expectation. She dared not go out for fear of missing Prosper. She grew so tight-strung as to doubt of nothing. Had Maulfry told her he would be with them to supper on such and such a night, she would have come shaking to the meal, rosy as a new bride, nothing doubting but that the next lift of her shy eyes would reveal him before her. Thus Maulfry by hints in easy degrees led her on; and not only did she not dare to go out, but she lost all wish to peer for him in the wood, because she had been led to the conviction that he was actually in the tower—a mysterious, harboured visitant who would appear late or soon, obedient to his destiny. A door even was pointed at, smiled and winked at, passed by light-foot as they went along the gallery. Maulfry had a biting humour which sometimes led her further than she was aware.

She kept Isoult in a fever by her tricks; by this particular trick she risked a different fire—jealousy. For of the four persons who made up the household, she alone went behind that door. Vincent, the young page, brought food and wine to the threshold; Maulfry came out and took them in. But there she was perfectly safe. Isoult could never be jealous of Prosper; she would despair, but would resent nothing he might do. Jealousy requires two things exorbitantly—self-love and a sensitive surface. Isoult loved Love and Prosper—the two in one glorious image; and as for her surface, that, like the rest of her, body and soul, was his when Love allowed. Nor was she even curious, at first. Many thrashings, acquaintance with her world which was close if not long, and a deeply-driven scorn of herself threw her blindly upon the discretion of the only man she had ever found to be at once splendid and humane. What he chose was the law and what he declared the prophets. But she might get curious on other grounds, on grounds where destiny and suchlike mannish appendages did not hold up a finger at her. And in fact she did.

* * * * *

Meantime Maulfry took charge of her body and will. Isoult was obedient in everything but one. Maulfry, who always saw the girl undress and go to bed, objected to her prayers.

"Pray!" she would call out, "for what and to what do you pray? Pray to your husband when you have one, and he will give you according to your deserts, which he alone can appraise. Trust him for that. But to crave boons you know little of, from a God of whom you know nothing at all, save that you made him in your own image—what profit can that be?"

To which Isoult replied, "He told me always to pray, ma'am, and I cannot disobey any of his words."

"Ah, I remember he was given to the game. Hum! And what else did he tell you, child?"

"Deal justly, live cleanly, breathe sweet breath," Isoult answered in a whisper, as if she were in church: "praise God when He is kind, bow head and knees when He is angry, look for Him to be near at all times. Do this, and beyond it trust to thine own heart."

Maulfry pished and pshawed at this hushed oracle. "You would do better to eat well and sleep softly. 'Twould bring you nearer your heart's desire. Men like a girl to be sleek."

But in this Isoult had her way, though she said her prayers in bed. In all else she was meek as a mouse. Maulfry made her dress to suit her own taste, and let down her hair. The dress was of thin silk, fitted close, and was cut low in the neck. Isoult, who had known pinned rags, and had gone feet and legs bare without a thought, went now as if she were naked, or clothed only in her shame. But it was the fashion Maulfry adopted towards her own person, and there were no others to convict her. Nanno the old serving-woman and Vincent the page, who was only a boy, made up the household-except for the closed door. Nanno never looked at anything higher than the ground; and as for Vincent, he was in love with Isoult, and would sooner have looked at Christ in judgment.

Of those two people Nanno was believed to be dumb; Isoult, at least, never got speech of her. Vincent, who was treated by Maulfry as if he had been a mechanism, was a very simple machine. If Maulfry had been less summary with him she might have prevented the inevitable; but like all people with brains she thought a simpleton was an ass, and kicks your only speech with such. Vincent and Isoult, therefore, became friends as the days went on. Maulfry's cagebirds drew their heads together, and in Vincent's case, at any rate, it was not long before the blood began to beat livelier for the contact. Isoult was as simple as he was, and concealed nothing from him that came up in their talks together. She knew much more than he about birds, about the woods, the country beyond the forest—great rolling sheep-pastures, dim stretches of fen, sleepy rivers, the heaths and open lands about Malbank. Of all these things which came to him through her voice almost with a breath of their own roving air, he knew absolutely nothing, whereas there was very little county-lore which she did not know. She seemed indeed to him a woodland creature herself, in touch with the birds and beasts. She could put her hand into a cage full of them; the little twinkling eyes were steady upon her, but there was no fluttering or beating at the bars. Her hand closed on the bird, drew it out: the next minute it was free upon her shoulder, peeping into her sidelong face. She could hold it up to her lips: it would take the seed from her. The horses knew her call and her speaking voice. They would go and come, stand or start, as she whispered in their pricked ears. Vincent thought she might easily be a fairy. But, "No, Vincent," she would say to that, "I am a very poor girl, poorer than you."

One day Vincent disputed this point.

"You go in silks and have pearls on your head."

"They are not mine, Vincent."

"My mistress loves you."

"Oh, in love I am very rich," said the girl.

"Everybody would love you, I think," he dared.

But she shook her head at this.

"I have not found that. I am not sure of anybody's love."

"I know of one person of whom you may be very sure," said the boy, out of breath.

"But I never meant that when I said I was rich. I meant that I was rich in love, not in being loved. Ah, no!"

"You ask not to be loved, Isoult?"

"Oh, it would be impossible to be loved as I mean, as I love."

"I would like to know that. Whom do you love?"

"Why, my lord, of course! Must I not love my lord?"

"Your lord!" stammered Vincent, red to the roots of his hair. "Your lord! I never knew that you loved a lord." He gulped, and went on at random—"And where is your lord?"

"I cannot tell. He may be in this castle. I only know that I shall see him when his time comes."

"If he is in this castle, Isoult," said Vincent, sober again, "his time is not yet."

She caught her breath.

"How do you know that?" she panted.

"I know that there is a great lord in the Red Chamber, him that Madam
Maulfry tends with her own hands."

"Ah, ah! You have seen him?"

"No, I have never seen him. He is very ill."

Isoult gazed at him, shocked to the soul. Ill, and she not near by!

"Oh, Vincent," she whispered. "Oh, Vincent!"

"Yes, Isoult,"—Vincent had caught some breath of her horror, and whispered,—"Yes, Isoult, he is very ill. He has been ill since the autumn, with bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. I know that is true, though I have never seen him since he was brought here swathed up in a litter; but I once saw Madam Maulfry bury something in the wood, very early in the morning. And I was frightened. Ah! I have seen strange things here, such as I dare not utter even now. So I watched my time and dug up what she had concealed. They were bloody clothes, Isoult, very many of them, and ells long! So it is true."

Isoult swayed about like a broken bough. Vincent ran to catch her, fearing she would fall. He felt the shaking of her body under his hands. That frightened him. He began to beseech.

"Isoult, dear Isoult, I have hurt you, I who would rather die, I who—am very fond of you, Isoult. Look now, be yourself again—think of this. He may not be ill by now; he is likely much better. I will find out for you. Trust me to find it all out."

"No, no, no," she whispered in haste; "you must do nothing, can do nothing. This is mine. I will find out."

"Will you ask Madam Maulfry?" said Vincent. "She will kill me if she knows that I have told you. Not that I mind that," he added in his own excuse, "but you will gain nothing that way."

"No," Isoult answered curtly. "I will find out by myself. Hush! Some one is coming. Go now."

Vincent went slowly away, for he too heard the sweep of Maulfry's robe. There was a long looking-glass in the wall, flickering over which Isoult's eyes encountered their own woeful image-brooding, reproachful, haunted eyes; this would never do for her present business. Determined to meet craft with craft, she wried her mouth to a smile, she drove peace into her eyes, took a bosomful of breath, and turned to be actress for the first time in her life. This meant to realize and then express herself. She was like to become an artist.

Towards the end of that night her brain swam with fatigue. She had had to study, first Maulfry, second, her new self, third, her old self. In studying Maulfry she began unconsciously to prepare for the shock to come—the shock of a free-given faith, than which no crisis can be more exquisite for a child. So far, however, she had no cause to distrust her chÂtelaine's honour, nor even her judgment. Both, she doubted not, were in Prosper's keeping.

Maulfry was in a gay, malicious humour. She pinched Isoult's cheek when she met her.

"Tired of waiting, my minion?" she began.

"No, ma'am, I am not tired at all."

"That is well. I went by the eye-shine. So you are still patient for the great reward! Well, build not too high, my dear. All men are alike, as I find them."

"My reward is to serve, ma'am, not to win."

"It is a reward one may weary of with time. There may be too much service where the slave is willing, child. But to win gives an appetite for more winning; and so the game goes on."

Again, later on, she said—

"I should like him to see you tonight, child. He would be more malleable set near such a fire. Your cheeks are burning bright! As for your big eyes, I believe you burnish them. Do you know how handsome you are, I wonder?"

"No one has ever told me that but you, ma'am," said Isoult, demure.

"Pooh, your glass will have told you. They don't lie."

"I never had a glass till I came here. Not even at the convent."

"And did you never get close enough to use somebody's eyes?" said
Maulfry, with a sly look.

Isoult had nothing to say to this. Touch her on the concrete of her love, and she was always dumb.

"Well then, I will stay flattering you, and advise," Maulfry pursued. "When that august one chooses to unveil, do you present yourself on knees as you now are. In two minutes you will not be on your own, but on his, if I know mankind."

Isoult changed the talk.

"Do you know, or can you tell me, when my lord will come out, ma'am?" she ventured.

"Come out, child? Out of what? Out of a box?" Maulfry cried in mock rage. "'Tis my belief you know as much as I do. 'Tis my belief you have been at a keyhole."

Mockery gave way; the matter was serious.

"Remember now, Isoult, in doing that you will disobey a greater than I, and as good a friend. And remember what disobedience may mean."

Again she changed her tone in view of Isoult's collapse.

"You look reproaches," she said; "your eyes seem to say, like a wounded hare's, 'Strike me again. I must quiver, but I will never run.' So, child, so, I was but half in earnest. You are an obedient child, and so I will tell Messire, if by any chance I should see him first." And so on, until they went to bed.

When at last that breathing space came, Isoult was nearly choked with the fatigue of her artistic escapades; but there was no time to lose. As soon as she dared she got up in the dark, put her cloak over her night-dress, and crept out into the gallery. The door creaked as she opened it; she stood white and quailing, while her heart beat like a hammer. But nothing stirred. She went first to Maulfry's door and listened. She heard her breathing. All fast there. Then like a hare she fled on to the door she knew so well. There was a light under it: she heard a rustle as of paper or parchment. Whoever was there was turning the leaves of a book. In the silence which seemed to press upon her ears and throb in them, she debated with herself what she should do. She knew that there was indeed no question about it. If he was ill, everything—all her humility and all his tacit authority—must give way. There was but one place for a wife. Maulfry did not know she was his wife. She listened again. Inside the room she now heard some one shift in bed, and—surely that was a low groan. Oh, Lord! Oh, Love! She turned the handle; she stood in the doorway; she saw Galors sitting up in bed with a book on his knees, a lamp by his side. His sick face, bandaged and swathed, glowered at her, with great hollow eyes and a sour mouth dropped at one corner.

She stood unable to move or cry.

"All is well, dear friend," said Galors; "I did but shift and let a little curse. Go to bed, Maulfry."

Isoult had the wit to withdraw. What little she had left after that pointed a shaking finger at one thing only—flight. She had been unutterably betrayed. Her conception of the universe reeled over and was lost in fire. There was no time to think of it, none to be afraid; she did what there was to do swiftly, with a clearer head than she had believed herself capable of. She slipt back to her room without doubt or terror, and put on the clothes in which she had come from the convent, a grey gown with a leather girdle, woollen stockings, thick shoes—over all a long red hooded cloak. This done she stood a moment thinking. No, she dare not try the creaking door again; the window must serve her turn. She opened it and looked out. Through the fretty tracery of the firs she could see a frosty sky, blue-grey fining to green, green to yellow where the moon swam, hard and bright. There was not a breath of air.

She climbed at once on to the window-ledge, and stood, holding to the jamb, looking down at the black below.

A great branch ran up to the wall at a right angle; it seemed made for her intent. Sitting with your legs out of the window it was easy to take hold of a branch. She tried; it was easy, but not in a cloak. So she sat again on the sill, took off her cloak, and tried once more. Soon she was out of the window, swinging by the branch. Then her feet touched another, and very slowly (for she was panic-stricken at the least noise) she worked her way downwards to the trunk of the great tree. Once there it was easy; she was soon on the ground. But she had no notion what to do next, save that she must do it at once—whither to turn, how to get out of the wood the best and safest way. Then another thing struck her. She would be chased, that was of course. She had been chased before, and tracked, and caught. Little as she could dare that, what chance had she, a young girl flying loose in this part of the forest, a young girl decently dressed, looking as she knew now that she looked; what chance had she indeed? Well, what was she to do? She remembered Vincent.

Vincent and Nanno did not sleep in the tower: that would have been inconvenient in Maulfry's view. They had a little outhouse not ten paces from it, and slept there. Thither went Isoult, jumping at every snapt twig; the door yielded easily, but which bed should she try? Nanno, she knew, snored, for Vincent had once made her laugh by recounting his troubles under the spell of it. Well, the left-hand bed was undoubtedly Nanno's at that rate; Isoult went to the right-hand bed and felt delicately with her hand at its head. Vincent's curls!

Then she knelt down and put her face close to the boy's, whispering in his ear.

"Whisper, Vincent, whisper," she said; "whisper back to me. Do you love me, Vincent? Whisper."

"You know that I love you, Isoult," Vincent whispered. "Hush! not too loud," said she again. "Vincent, will you get up and come into the wood with me? I want to tell you something. Will you come very quietly indeed?"

"Yes," said Vincent. The whole breathless intercourse worked into his dreams of her; but he woke and sat up.

"Come," said Isoult. She crept out again to wait for him.

Vincent came out in his night-gown. The moon showed him rather scared, but there was no doubt about his sentiments. Love-blind Isoult herself could have no doubt. She lost no time.

"Vincent, I must tell you everything. I shall be in your hands, at your mercy. I must go away at once, Vincent. If I stay another hour I shall never see the daylight again. They will kill me, Vincent, or do that which no one can speak of. Then I shall kill myself. This is quite true. I have seen something to-night. There is no doubt at all. Will you help me, Vincent?"

Vincent gaped at her. "How—what—why—what shall I do?" he murmured, beginning to tremble. "Oh, Isoult, you know how I—what I whispered—!"

"Yes, yes, I know. That is why I came. You must do exactly what I tell you. You must lend me some of your clothes, any that you have, now, at once. Will you do this?'

"My clothes!" he began to gasp.

"Yes. Go and get them, please. But make no noise, for the love of
Christ."

Vincent tip-toed back. He returned, after a time of dreadful rummaging in the dark, with a bundle.

"I have brought what I could find. They are all there. I could not bring what I put on every day, for many reasons. These are the best I have. How will you—can you—? They are not easy to put on, I think, for a girl."

Poor Vincent! Isoult had no time nor heed for the modesty proper to lovers.

"I will manage," she said. "Turn round, please."

Vincent did as he was bid. He even shut his eyes. Presently Isoult spoke again.

"Could you find me a pair of scissors, Vincent?" She had been quick to learn that beauty must be obeyed. She would have asked Vincent for the moon if she had happened to want it, and would have seen him depart on the errand without qualm. Sure enough, he brought the scissors before her held-out hand had grown tired.

"Cut off my hair," she said, "level with my shoulders."

"Your hair!" cried the poor lad. "Oh, Isoult, I dare not."

It reached her knees, was black as night, and straight as rain. It might have echoed Vincent's reproach. But the mistress of both was inexorable.

"Cut it to clear my shoulders, please."

He groaned, but remembered that there would be spoils, that he must even touch this hedged young goddess. So as she stood, doubleted, breeched, and in his long red hose, he hovered round her. Soon she was lightened of her load of glory, and as spruce as a chamber-page.

"Now," she said, "you must tell me the way to the nearest shelter. There is a place called St. Lucy's Precinct, I have heard. Where is that?"

He told her. Keep straight away from the moon. It was just there: he pointed with his hand. As long as the moon held she could not fail to hit it. Beyond the pine-wood there was an open shaw; she could keep through that, then cross a piece of common with bracken cut and stacked. Afterwards came a very deep wood, full of beech-timber. You crossed a brook at Four Mile Bottom,—you could hear the ripples of the ford a half-mile away,—and held straight for the top of Galley Hill. After that the trees began again, oaks mostly. A tall clump of firs would lead you there. Beyond them was the yew-tree wood. The precinct was there. But the moon was her best lamp. He was talking to her in language which she understood better than he. She could never miss the road now.

She thanked him. Then came a pause.

"I must go, Vincent," said she. "You have been my friend this night. I will tell my lord when I see him. He will reward you better than I."

"He can never reward me!" cried Vincent.

She sighed and turned to go, but he started forward and held her with both hands at her waist. She seemed so like a boy of his age, it gave him courage.

"Isoult," he stammered, "Isoult!"

"Yes, Vincent," says she.

"Are you going indeed?"

"I must go at once."

"Shall I see you again?"

"Ah, I cannot tell you that."

"Do you care nothing?"

"I think you have been my friend. Yes, I should like to see you again, some day."

"Oh, Isoult—"

"What?"

"Will you give me something?"

"What have I, Vincent? If I could you know that I would."

He had her yet by the waist. There was no blinking what he wanted.
Isoult stood.

"You may kiss me there," she said with the benignity of a princess, and gave him her hand.

The boy's mouth was very near her cheek. Something—who knows what?—checked him. He let go her waist, dropped on his knees and kissed the hand, turned little prince in his turn. Isoult was as near loving him then as she could ever be. This was no great way, perhaps, but near enough for immediate purposes. When Vincent got up she gave him her hand frankly to hold. They were two children now, and like two children kissed each other without under-thought. Then, as she sped away from the moon, Vincent crept back to his cold bed with an armful of black hair.