of melody and gladness. God was very good
to her, and sent her in her hour of need this great consolation--a
consolation indeed that must have served to efface whatever sorrow could
have beset her.

"Why then, sweet lady, is my task that I had feared to find all fraught
with difficulty, grown easy indeed."

And hearing him pause:

"What task is that, Sir Crispin?" she asked, intent on helping him.

He did not reply at once. He found it difficult to devise an answer.
To tell her brutally that he was come to bear her away, willing
or unwilling, on behalf of another, was not easy. Indeed, it was
impossible, and he was glad that inclinations in her which he had little
dreamt of, put the necessity aside.

"My task, Mistress Cynthia, is to bear you hence. To ask you to resign
this peaceful life, this quiet home in a little corner of the world,
and to go forth to bear life's hardships with one who, whatever be his
shortcomings, has the all-redeeming virtue of loving you beyond aught
else in life."

He gazed intently at her as he spoke, and her eyes fell before his
glance. He noted the warm, red blood suffusing her cheeks, her brow, her
very neck; and he could have laughed aloud for joy at finding so simple
that which he had feared would prove so hard. Some pity, too, crept
unaccountably into his stern heart, fathered by the little faith which
in his inmost soul he reposed in Jocelyn. And where, had she resisted
him, he would have grown harsh and violent, her acquiescence struck
the weapons from his hands, and he caught himself well-nigh warning her
against accompanying him.

"It is much to ask," he said. "But love is selfish, and love asks much."

"No, no," she protested softly, "it is not much to ask. Rather is it
much to offer."

At that he was aghast. Yet he continued:

"Bethink you, Mistress Cynthia, I have ridden back to Sheringham to ask
you to come with me into France, where my son awaits us?"

He forgot for the moment that she was in ignorance of his relationship
to him he looked upon as her lover, whilst she gave this mention of his
son, of whose existence she had already heard from her; father, little
thought at that moment. The hour was too full of other things that
touched her more nearly.

"I ask you to abandon the ease and peace of Sheringham for a life as a
soldier's bride that may be rough and precarious for a while, though,
truth to tell, I have some influence at the Luxembourg, and friends upon