“Thou’rt young, messire,” she said wistfully, “yet in thy life hath been much of strife, I’ve heard.  Thou hast known much of hardship, my son, and sorrow methinks?”

“So do I live for that fair day when Peace shall come again, noble lady.”

“Full oft have I heard tell of thee, my son, strange tales and marvellous.  Some do liken thee to a demon joying in slaughter, and some to an archangel bearing the sword of God.”

“And how think you, reverend mother?”

“I think of thee as a man, my son.  I have heard thee named ‘outlaw’ and ‘lawless ravener,’ and some do call thee ‘Beltane the Smith.’  Now wherefore smith?”

“For that smith was I bred, lady.”

“But thou’rt of noble blood, lord Beltane.”

“Yet knew I nought of it until I was man grown.”

“Thy youth—­they tell me—­hath been very lonely, my son—­and desolate.”

“Not desolate, for in my loneliness was the hermit Ambrose who taught me many things and most of all, how to love him.  So lived I in the greenwood, happy and content, until on a day this saintly Ambrose told me a woeful tale—­so did I know this humble hermit for the noble Duke, my father.”

“Thy father!  The Duke!  A hermit!  Told he of—­all his sorrows, my son?”

“All, reverend mother, and thereafter bade me beware the falsity of women.”

The pale cheek of the Abbess grew suddenly suffused, the slim hand clenched rigid upon the crucifix at her bosom, but she stirred not nor lifted her sad gaze from the fire.

“Liveth thy father yet, my son?”

“’Tis so I pray God, lady.”

“And—­thy mother?”

“’Tis so I’ve heard.”

“Pray you not for—­for her also?”

“I never knew my mother, lady.”

“Alas! poor lonely mother!  So doth she need thy prayers the more.  Ah, think you she hath not perchance yearned with breaking heart for her babe?  To have kissed him into rosy slumber!  To have cherished his boyish hurts and sorrows!  To have gloried in his youthful might and manhood!  O sure there is no sorrow like the loneliness of desolate motherhood.  Would’st seek this unknown mother, lord Beltane?”

“Truly there be times when I do yearn to find her—­and there be times when I do fear—­”

“Fear, my lord?”

“Holy mother, I learned of her first as one false to her vows, light-minded and fickle from her youth—­”

“O hath there been none to speak thee good of her—­in all these years?”

“There was Jolette, that folk did call a witch, and there is Sir Benedict that doth paint her pure and noble as I would have her.  Yet would I know for myself, fain would I be sure ere we do meet, if she is but the woman who bore me, or the proud and noble mother I fain would love.”