Joan turned deadly pale.  She had not known that her secret had passed beyond her own possession.  How came Peter Sanghurst to speak of her as having a lover?  Was it all guesswork?  True, he had been jealous of Raymond in old days.  Was this all part of a preconcerted and diabolical plot against her happiness?

Her profound distrust of this man, and her conviction of his entire unscrupulousness, helped to steady her nerves.  If she had so wily a foe to deal with, she had need of all her own native shrewdness and capacity.  After a few moments, which seemed hours to her from the concentrated thought pressed into them, she spoke quietly and calmly: 

“Of whom speak you, Sir?  Who is it that lies dead and cold?”

“Your lover, Raymond de Brocas,” answered Sanghurst, rising to his feet and confronting Joan with a gaze of would-be sympathy, though his eyes were steely bright and full of secret malice —­ “your lover, who died in my arms after the skirmish of which you may have heard, when the English army routed the besieging force around St. Jean d’Angely; and in dying he gave me a charge for you, sweet lady, which I have been longing ever since to deliver, but until today have lacked the opportunity.”

Joan’s eyes were fixed upon him wide with distrust.  She was in absolute ignorance of Raymond’s recent movements.  But in those days that was the fate of those who did not live in close contiguity.  She had been a rover in the world, and so perchance had he.  All that Sanghurst said might be true for aught she could allege to the contrary.

Yet how came it that Raymond should confide his dying message to his sworn and most deadly foe?  The story seemed to bear upon it the impress of falsehood.  Sanghurst, studying her face intently, appeared to read her thoughts.

“Lady,” he said, “if you will but listen to my tale, methinks I can convince you of the truth of my words.  You think that because we were rivals for your hand we were enemies, too?  And so of old it was.  But, fair mistress, you may have heard how Raymond de Brocas soothed the dying bed of my father, and tended him when all else, even his son, had fled from his side; and albeit at the moment even that service did not soften my hard heart, in the times that followed, when I was left alone to muse on what had passed, I repented me of my old and bitter enmity, and resolved, if ever we should meet again, to strive to make amends for the past.  I knew that he loved you, and that you loved him; and I vowed I would keep away and let his suit prosper if it might.  I appeal to you, fair mistress, to say how that vow has been kept.”

“I have certainly seen naught of you these past years,” answered Joan.  “But I myself have been a wanderer.”

“Had you not been, my vow would have been as sacredly kept,” was the quick reply.  “I had resolved to see you no more, since I might never call you mine.  I strove to banish your image from my mind by going forth into the world; and when this chance of fighting for the King arose, I was one who sailed to the relief of the English garrison.”