“Truth to tell,” said Martin Goodfellow, “Sir Hugh was testing his armour, and sharpening his battle-axe.”

As Mora passed into the dim coolness of the buttery, she was conscious of a very definite sense of surprise.  She had pictured Hugh in his lonely home, nursing his hungry heart, beside his desolate hearth.  She had seen herself coming softly behind him, laying a tender hand upon those bowed shoulders; then, as he lifted eyes in which dull despair would quickly give place to wondering joy, saying:  “Hugh, I am come home.”

But now, as she passed through the buttery, Mora had to realise that yet again she had failed to understand the man she loved.

It was not in him, to sit and brood over lost happiness.  If she failed him finally, he was ready in this, as in all else, to play the man, going straight on, unhindered by vain regret.

Once again her pride in him, in that he was finer than her own conceptions, quickened her love, even while it humbled her, in her own estimation, to a place at his feet.

A glory of joy was on her face as, making her way through to the terrace, now bathed in sunset light, she passed up to the chamber she had prepared during Hugh’s absence.

All was as she had left it.

Fastening the door by which she had entered from the garden, she noiselessly opened that which gave on to the great hall.

The hall was dark and deserted, but the door into the armoury stood ajar.

A shaft of golden sunshine streamed through the half-open door.

She heard the clang of armour.  She could not see Hugh, but even as she stood in her own doorway, looking across the hall, she heard his voice, singing, as he worked, snatches of the latest song of Blondel, the King’s Minstrel.

With beating heart, Mora turned and closed her door, making it fast within.

CHAPTER LIX

THE MADONNA IN THE HOME

Hugh d’Argent had polished his armour, put a keen edge on his battle-axe, and rubbed the rust from his swords.

The torment of suspense, the sickening pain of hope deferred, could be better borne, while he turned his mind on future battles, and his muscles to vigorous action.

Of the way in which the cup of perfect bliss had been snatched from his very lips, he could not trust himself to think.

His was the instinct of the fighter, to bend his whole mind upon the present, preparing for the future; not wasting energy in useless reconsideration of an accomplished past.

He had acted as he had felt bound in honour to act.  Gain or loss to himself had not been the point at issue.  Even as, in the hot fights with the Saracens, slaying or being slain might incidentally result from the action of the moment, but the possession of the Holy Sepulchre was the true object for which each warrior who had taken the cross, drew his sword or swung his battle-axe.