‘Ride on, ride on, my heart,’ said Richard; but she, ’No, no, he is coming.  We must wait.’  Her voice was full of despair.

The leper came jumping from rock to rock, a horrible thing of rags and sores, with a loose lower jaw, which his disease had fretted to dislocation.  He stood in their mid path, in full sun, and plucking at his disastrous eyes, peered upon the gay company.  By this time all the riders were clustered together before him, and he fingered them out one after another—­Richard, whom he called the Red Count, Gaston, Beziers, Auvergne, Limoges, Mercadet; but at Jehane he pointed long, and in a voice between a croak and a clatter (he had no palate), said thrice, ‘Hail thou!’

She replied faintly, ‘God be good to thee, brother.’  He kept his finger still upon her as he spoke again:  every one heard his words.

’Beware (he said) the Count’s cap and the Count’s bed; for so sure as thou liest in either thou art wife of a dead man, and of his killer.’  Jehane reeled, and Richard held her up.

‘Begone, thou miserable,’ he cried in his high voice, ’lest I pity thee no more.’  But the leper was capering away over the rocks, hopping and flapping his arms like an old raven.  At a safe distance he squatted down and watched them, his chin on his bare knees.

This frightened Jehane so much that in the refectory of a convent, where they stayed the night, she could hardly see her victual for tears, nor eat it for choking grief.  She exhausted herself by entreaties.  Milo says that she was heard crying out at Richard night after night, conjur ing him by Christ on the Cross, and Mary at the foot of the Cross, not to turn love into a stabbing blade; but all to no purpose.  He soothed and petted her, he redoubled her honours, he compelled her to love him; and the more she agonised the more he was confident he would right her.

Very definitely and with unexampled profusion he provided for her household and estate as soon as he was at home.  Kings’ daughters were among her honourable women, at least, counts’ daughters, daughters of viscounts and castellans.  She had Lady Saill of Ventadorn, Lady Elis of Montfort, Lady Tibors, Lady Maent, Lady Beatrix, all fully as noble, and two of them certainly more beautiful than she.  Lady Saill and Lady Elis were the most lovely women of Aquitaine, Saill with a face like a flame, Elis clear and cold as spring water in the high rocks.  He gave her a chancellor of her seal, a steward of the household, a bishop for chaplain.  Viscount Ebles of Ventadorn was her champion, and Bertran de Born (who had been doing secret mischief in the south, as you will learn by and by), if you will believe it, Bertran de Born was forgiven and made her trobador.  It was at a great Court of Love which Richard caused to be held in the orchards outside Poictiers, with pavilions and a Chastel d’Amors, that Bertran came in and was forgiven for the sake of his great singing.  On a white silk tribune before the castle