But this seems to be good sport to some damsels, and so it was with Sexberga.  The blacker grew the young thane’s looks the more she would praise me, and the more she would choose to speak with me rather than to him; wherefore his life was made wretched for him, and I think he hated the sight of me.  Maybe I was blind not to see this, but I liked him well enough, save for what I thought was his sullen temper, and I would try to joke him into better humour at times in all good fellowship.  But I think that the trouble began before I came back, with talk of the time when I had been at Penhurst before.

He was ever at Penhurst—­I should have thought ill of him if he had not been—­for Dallington was close at hand, and he was ever welcome.

After that talk with the lady I must needs ask Sexberga what she thought concerning my strange betrothal, she having had so much to say thereon before.  And so one day, as I had been with Spray to see some traps set by the bank of the Ashbourne river for otter, and was coming back with him, bearing a great one between us on a pole, we met Sexberga in the woodland track to the house, and Spray went on, while I walked back with her on her way to the old village—­where we had had the fight—­and talked about my baffled search.

Now her saying was that I had no need to pay any more heed to this betrothal after what I had said to Ailwin, and that he himself would seem to try to break it by thus taking Hertha out of my ken.  And we talked freely of the matter, and the last thing that I said was this, coming round to what I had made up my better mind for: 

“It is not much matter either way.  I can think of no maiden as things are.”

Whereon we met Eldred, and his face was not pleasant to look on, though he said nothing at that moment, and turned and walked silently with us on the other side of the maiden.

When we came to the village I said that we would wait outside until she came back, and thought that Eldred would go along with her.  But he stayed with me, and I looked round for a sunny seat where one could see all the long chain of bright hammer ponds that went in steps, as it were, down the valley before us.

“Nay,” he said in a strange voice, “come over to the other side of the valley—­there is a pleasant place there.”

“The lady will miss us,” said I.

“We need not be long,” he said.  “The place I would show you is not far.  One of us can be back before she has done with these churls.”

So, as I supposed that we might have to wait for half an hour, because every woman in the place would want to tell her ailments to the kindly young mistress most likely, we went together, passing over the brook, and going up the steep valley side beyond it, until we came to the rocks of the old quarry where we had rested before the fight with the outlaws.

A pleasant place enough it was, truly, for the rocks stood round in a little cliff, hemming in a lawn of short grass on every side but one, and the trees that hung on the bank of the stream closed that in.  So when we were fairly within this circle of red cliff and green trees Eldred said: