A sturdy voice arose out of the crowd.
"The fair lady, my Lord Count, and knights all, will need no champion as
far as I am concerned. When one sees so fair a pair together, what can a
knight say, in the name of all knighthood, but that the heavens have made
them for each other, and that it were sin and shame to sunder them?"
The voice was that of Gilbert of Ghent, who, making a virtue of necessity,
walked up to the pair, his weather-beaten countenance wreathed into what
were meant for paternal smiles.
"Why did you not say as much in Scotland, and save me all this trouble?"
pertinently asked the plain-spoken Scot.
"My lord prince, you owe me a debt for my caution. Without it, the poor
lady had never known the whole fervency of your love; or these noble
knights and yourself the whole evenness of Count Baldwin's justice."
Alftruda turned her head away half contemptuously; and as she did so, she
let her hand drop listlessly from Dolfin's grasp, and drew back to the
other ladies.
A suspicion crossed Hereward's mind. Did she really love the Prince? Did
those strange words of hers mean that she had not yet forgotten Hereward
himself?
However, he said to himself that it was no concern of his, as it certainly
was not: went home to Torfrida, told her everything that had happened,
laughed over it with her, and then forgot Alftruda, Dolfin, and Gilbert,
in the prospect of a great campaign in Holland.
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