But this!  The bolt of an arbalast could not have given him a more instant or tremendous shock.  His nerves still quivered responsive to the tremulous yielding of the lips he had touched for a moment in the dark of the doorway.  He felt that never could he be the same man he had been before.  Deep in his heart he laughed at the thought.

And then again, with a quick revulsion, the return wave came upon him.  “How, if she be as untouched as her beauty is fresh, has she learned that skill in caressing?”

He paused to think the matter over.

“I remember my father saying that a wise man should always mistrust a girl who kisses overwell.”

Then again his better self would reassert itself.

“No,” he would argue, tramping up and down the corridor, wheeling in the short bounds of the turnpike head, and again returning upon his own footsteps, “why should I belie her?  She is as pure as the air—­only, of course, she is different to all others.  She speaks differently; her eyes are different, her hair, her hands—­why should she not be different also in this?”

But when Maud Lindesay met Sholto in the morning, coming suddenly upon him as he stood, with a pale face and dark rings of sleeplessness about his eyes, as he looked meditatively out upon the broad river and the blue smoke of the morning campfires, there was yet another difference to be revealed to him.  He had expected that, like others, she would be confused and bashful meeting him thus in the daylight, after—­well, after the volcanic extinguishing of the lamp.

But there she stood, dainty and calm under the morning sunshine, in fresh clean gown of lace and varied whiteness, her face grave as a benediction, her eyes deep and cool like the water of the castle well.

Sholto started violently at sight of her, recovered himself, and eagerly held out both his hands.

“Maud,” he said hoarsely, and then again, in a lower tone, “sweetest Maud.”

But pretty Mistress Lindesay only gazed at him with a certain reserved and grave surprise, looking him straight in the face and completely ignoring his outstretched hands.

“Captain Sholto,” she said steadily and calmly, “the Lady Margaret desires to see you and to thank you for your last night’s care and watchfulness.  Will you do me the honour to follow me to her chamber?”

There was no yielding softness about this maiden of the morning hours, no conscious droop and a swift uplifting of penitent eyelids, no lingering glances out of love-weighted eyes.  A brisk and practical little lady rather, her feet pattering most purposefully along the flagged passages and skipping faster than even Sholto could follow her.  But at the top of the second stairs he was overquick for her.  By taking the narrow edges of the steps he reached the landing level with his mistress.

His desire was to put out his hand to circle her lithe waist, for nothing is so certainly reproductive of its own species as a first kiss.  But he had reckoned without the lady’s mutual intent and favour, which in matters of this kind are proverbially important.  Mistress Maud eluded him, without appearing to do so, and stood farther off, safely poised for flight, looking down at him with cold, reproachful eyes.