‘As English, Count, for the son of England!’ cried his father; ’or for his wife, by the mass, if he is fit to have one.’

‘Of that, sire, we must talk at your Grace’s leisure,’ said Richard slowly.  ‘Jesus!’ he asked himself, ’will he put me to a block of ice?  What is the matter with this woman?’ The King put an end to his questions by dismissing Madame Alois, breaking up the assembly, and himself retiring.  He was dreadfully fatigued, quite white and breathless.  Richard saw him follow the lady through the inner curtain, and again was uncomfortably suspicious.  But when his brother John made to slip in also he thought there must be an end of it.  He tapped the young man on the shoulder.

‘Brother, a word with you,’ says he; and John came twittering back.  The two were alone in the tent.

This John—­Sansterre, Landlos, Lackland, so they variously called him—­was a timid copy of his brother, a wry-necked reedy Richard with a sniff.  Not so tall, yet more spare, with blue eyes more pallid than his brother’s, and protruding where Richard’s were inset, the difference lay more in degree than kind.  Richard was of heroic build, but a well-knit, well-shaped hero; in John the arms were too long, the head too small, the brow too narrow.  Richard’s eyes were perhaps too wide apart; no doubt John’s were too near together.  Richard twitched his fingers when he was moved, John bit his cheek.  Richard stooped from the neck, John from the shoulders.  When Richard threw up his head you saw the lion; John at bay reminded you of a wolf in a corner.  John snarled at such times, Richard breathed through his nose.  John showed his teeth when he was crossed, Richard when he was merry.  So many thousand points of unlikeness might be named, all small:  the Lord knows here are enough.  The Angevin cat-and-dog nature was fairly divided between these two.  Richard had the sufficiency of the cat, John the dependence of a dog; John had the cat’s secretiveness, Richard the dog’s dash.  At heart John was a thief.

He feared and hated his brother; so when Richard said, ’Brother, a word with you,’ John tried to disguise apprehension in disgust.  The result was a very sick smile.

‘Willingly, dear brother, and the more so—­’ he began; but Richard cut him short.

‘What under the light of the sky is the matter with that lady?’ he asked him.

John had been preparing for that.  He raised his eyebrows and splayed out both his hands.  ’Can you ask?  Eh, our Lord!  Emotion—­a stranger in a strange land—­an access of the shudders—­who knows women?  So long from France-dreadful of her brother—­dreadful of you—­so many things! a silly mind—­ah, my brother!’

Richard checked him testily.  ’Put a point, put a point, you drown me in phrases; your explanations explain nothing.  One more word.  What in the devil’s name is she doing in there?’ He had a short way.  John began to stammer.

‘A second father—­a tender guardian—­’