With all these, and with their courtiers, who took complexion from their masters, Jehane had to hold the fair way.  As a mistress who was to be a wife, the veiled familiarity with which she was treated was always preaching to her.  How dare she be a Countess who was of so little account already?  The poor girl felt herself doomed beforehand.  What king’s mistress had ever been his wife?  And how could she be Richard’s wife, betrothed to Gilles de Gurdun?  Richard was much afield in these days, making military dispositions against his coming absence in Poictou.  She saw him rarely; but in return she saw his peers, and had to keep her head high among the women of the French court.  And so she did until one day, as she was walking back from mass with her ladies, she saw her brother Saint-Pol on horseback, him and William des Barres.  Timidly she would have slipped by; but Saint-Pol saw her, reined up his horse in the middle of the street, and stared at her as if she had been less than nothing to him.  She felt her knees fail her, she grew vividly red, but she kept her way.  After this terrible meeting she dared not leave the convent.

Of course she was quite safe.  Saint-Pol could not do anything against the conqueror of Touraine, the ally of his master; but she felt tainted, and had thoughts (not for the first time) of taking the veil.  One woman had already taken it; she heard much concerning Madame Alois from the Canonesses, how she had a little cell at Fontevrault among the nuns there, how she shivered with cold in the hottest sun, how she shrieked o’ nights, how chattered to herself, and how she used a cruel discipline.  All these things working upon Jehane’s mind made her love an agony.  Many and many a time when her royal lover came to visit her she clung to him with tears, imploring him to cast her off again; but the more she bewailed the more he pursued his end.  In truth he was master by this time, and utterly misconceived her.  Nothing she might say or do could stay him from his intent, which was to wed and afterwards crown her Countess of Poictou.  This was to be done at Pentecost, as the only reparation he could make her.

Not even what befell on the way to Poictiers for this very thing could alter him.  Again he misread her, or was too full of what he read in himself to read her at all.  They left Le Mans a fortnight before Pentecost with a great train of lords and ladies, Richard looking like a young god, with the light of easy mastery shining in his eyes.  She, poor girl, might have been going to the gallows—­and before the end of the journey would thankfully have gone there; and no wonder.  Listen to this.

Midway between Chatelherault and Poictiers is a sandy waste covered with scrub of juniper and wild plum, which contrives a living by some means between great bare rocks.  It is a disconsolate place, believed to be the abode of devils and other damned spirits.  Now, as they were riding over this desert, picking their way among the boulders at the discretion of their animals, it so happened that Richard and Jehane were in front by some forty paces.  Riding so, presently Jehane gave a short gasping cry, and almost fell off her horse.  She pointed with her hand, and ’Look, look, look!’ she said in a dry whisper.  There at a little distance from them was a leper, who sat scratching himself on a rock.