‘Saint-Pol,’ he said immediately, ’I should like to speak with you.  I owe you that.’

‘Your Grace’s servant,’ said Eudo, with a stiff reverence, ’when and where you will.’

‘Follow me,’ said Richard, ’as soon as you have done with all this foppery.’

In about an hour’s time he was obeyed.  After his fashion he took a straight plunge.

‘Saint-Pol,’ he said, ’I think you know where my heart is, whether here or elsewhere.  I desire you to understand that in this case I am acting against my own will and judgment.’

The frankness of this lordly creature was unmistakable, even to Saint-Pol.

‘Hey, sire—­,’ he began spluttering, honesty in arms with rage.  Richard took him up.

’If you doubt that, as you have my leave to do, I am ready to convince you.  I will ride with you wherever you choose, and place myself at your discretion.  Subject to this, mind you, that the award is final.  Once more I will do it.  Will you abide by that?  Will you come with me?’

Saint-Pol cursed his fate.  Here he was, tied to the French girl.

‘My lord,’ he said, ’I cannot obey you.  My duty is to take Madame to Paris.  That is my master’s command.’

‘Well,’ said Richard, ’then I shall go alone.  Once more I shall go.  I am sick to death of this business.’

‘My lord Richard,’ cried Saint-Pol, ’I am no man to command you.  Yet I say, Go.  I know not what has passed between your Grace and my sister Jehane; but this I know very well.  It will be a strange thing’—­he laughed, not pleasantly—­’a strange thing, I say, if you cannot bend that arbiter to your own way of thinking.’  Richard looked at him coldly.

‘If I could do that, my friend,’ he said, ’I should not suffer arbitration at all.’

‘The proposition was not mine, my lord,’ urged Saint-Pol.

‘It could not be, sir,’ Richard said sharply.  ’I proposed it myself, because I consider that a lady has the right to dispose of her own person.  She loved me once.’

‘I believe that she is yours at this hour, sire.’

‘That is what I propose to find out,’ said Richard.  ’Enough.  What news have they in Paris?’

Saint-Pol could not help himself; he was bursting with a budget he had received from the south.  ’They greatly admire a sirvente of Bertran de Born’s, sire.’

‘What is the stuff of the sirvente?’

’It is a scandalous subject, sire.  He calls it the Sirvente of Kings, and speaks much evil of your Order.’  Richard laughed.

’I will warrant him to do that better than any man alive, and allow him some reason for it.  I think I will go to see Bertran.’

‘Ha, sire,’ said Saint-Pol with meaning, ’he will tell you many things, some good, and some not so good.’

‘Be sure he will,’ said Richard.  ‘That is Bertran’s way.’