The dryad

"May not be," Rainouart flung back, hotly. "I tell you it must be. She saved my life and I loved her, and we swore our mutual troth. Then I was practised on by magic, and I forgot my true-love, and went in bondage to a false faith, and from this shame my true-love has saved me now as before she saved me from death. I am bound to her in honor as I am bound to her in love, and on my honor and by my love I will go to her with the dawn."

Rainouart's face darkened, for he thought of his mother, the gracious lady so basely abandoned, and he thanked God in his heart that his honor was not as the honor of Duke Baldwin. But Duke Baldwin was not skilled to read either his son's face or his son's heart, and he went on, bluffly:

"Why not?" Rainouart asked, with such a frown as might have wrinkled his father's forehead, and the big duke, who liked his son's manner best when most it resembled his own, went on very amiably to explain. He told how the Duchess of Thebes had declared war upon Athens, at which tidings Rainouart laughed contemptuously; and how Fernand Ximenes inclined to her, and would in all likelihood whistle the Grand Company to her cause. At this Rainouart's eyes shone and his pale cheeks flushed ruddy, for if this were so, it promised a fight that would be worth the fighting.

He smiled somewhat sourly as he spoke, for he had no great confidence in the martial constancy of knights that plied their books and fell in love with country wenches. But he read Rainouart's answer in his eyes before he got it from his lips, and it reassured him.

Simon nodded his head approvingly, and the duke for his part applauded in his heart. He liked the lad's belligerent spirit, however little he relished the nonsense about the witch in the wood. Duke Baldwin's affection for his son, never very vehement, had waxed when he had returned as the betrothed of the Duchess of Thebes, but had dwindled to insignificance with the shattering of that alliance and the chance that his son might die by a stroke from a woman's hand. Indeed, the jovial duke, alarmed by the sudden possibility of an heirless duchy, had even in the last few minutes begun to revolve again in his mind a project that he had abandoned with the coming of the Duchess of Thebes. He had up to that time been so much disappointed with his son that, although as a general principle much averse to marriage as an institution, he was seriously thinking of wedding again. He loved to have about him none but such as were jolly eaters, jolly drinkers, jolly lovers, jolly soldiers, and when he observed the difference between his son and himself and those he cherished, he shuddered over the thought that such a puling, mulish reader of books might one day rule in Athens. Baldwin was still in the prime of life, with every right to hope for an heir, and he began to reconcile himself to the thought of a state which he had always regarded as bondage, though when it existed for him before he had allowed it to bind him but little.

Now, however, the readiness of Rainouart to obey the call to arms made Baldwin more content with his son, though he frowned at the foolish words about marrying his true-love. However, with the gain of a little time Rainouart's mind might change, though that did not seem likely, or he might be prevailed upon to take a less high-flown sense of his obligations to his lovely amazon, or, at the worst, the girl might be got rid of some way or other.

"Well," he said, cheerfully, "you must wait a while ere you can talk of marriage to a maid. For you are married, lad, hard and fast, married to the lady Esclaramonde of Thebes, for a marriage is a marriage though it be but a marriage in name."

"Only our Holy Father the Pope can set you apart now, for even when we take Thebes it would scarcely chime with the chivalry of the Rock to kill the baggage, however much she deserve it. But I will send an envoy to Avignon to put our case before the pontiff. By the time he returns we shall have taken Thebes, and then you will be a free man to go a-wooing in a wood."