“She may marry again,” put in Galors.
“She is twice a widow,” the Abbot snapped
him up, and gave his first shock. “She
is twice a widow, once against her will. She will
never marry again.”
“Then, my father,” said Galors, “we
should be safe as against the Crown, which the Countess
probably loves as little as the rest of her kind.”
“The Countess Isabel,” said the Abbot,
speaking like an oracle, “is not childless.”
Galors understood.
“Do not misunderstand me in this, Brother Galors,”
said the Abbot. “We will do the girl no
unnecessary harm. We will slip her out of the
country if we can get any one to take her. Put
it she shall be married or hanged.” Galors
again thought that he understood. The Abbot went
on. “There shall be no burning, though that
were deserved; not even tumbril, though that were
little harm to so hot a piece. There shall be,
indeed, that which the Countess believes to have been
already-a sally at dawn and a flitting. There
will then be no harm done. The tithing will be
free of a sucking witch, and the heart of our benefactress
turned from the child of her sin (for such it was to
break troth to the earl, and sin she deems it) to the
child of her spiritual adoption, to wit, our Holy
Thorn.” He added “You are in my obedience,
Galors. I love you much, and will see to your
advancement. You have a great future. But,
my brother, remember this. Between a woman’s
heart and her conscience there can be no fight.
There is, rather, a triumph, wherein the most glorious
of the’ victor’s spoils is that same conscience,
shackled and haled behind the . That you should know,
and on that you must act. Remember you are fighting
for Saint Giles of Holy Thorn, and be speedy while
the new tool still burns in your hand.”
So with his blessing he dismissed Dom Galors for the
day.
LA DESIROUS
Prosper le Gai—all Morgraunt before him—rose
from his bed before the Countess had turned in hers;
and long before the Abbot could get alone with Dom
Galors he was sighing for his breakfast. He had,
indeed, seen the dawn come in, caught the first shiver
of the trees, the first tentative chirp of the birds,
watched the slow filling of the shadowy pools and
creeks with the grey tide of light. From brake
to brake he struggled, out of the shade into the dark,
thence into what seemed a broad lake of daylight.
He met no living thing; or ever the sun kissed the
tree-tops he was hungry. He was well within Morgraunt
now, though only, as it might be, upon the hem of
its green robe; the adventurous place opened slowly
to him like some great epic whose majesty and force
dawns upon you by degrees not to be marked. It
was still twilight in the place where he was when
he heard the battling of birds’ wings, the screaming
of one bird’s grief, and the angry purr of another,
or of others. He peered through the bush as the
