* * * * *

Ralph had intended returning home a week or two after the Lewes visitation, but there was a good deal to be done, and Layton had pointed out to him that even if some houses were visited twice over it would do no harm to the rich monks to pay double fees; so it was not till Christmas was a week away that he rode at last up to his house-door at Westminster.

His train had swelled to near a dozen men and horses by now, for he had accumulated a good deal of treasure beside that which he had left in Layton’s hands, and it would not have been safe to travel with a smaller escort; so it was a gay and imposing cavalcade that clattered through the narrow streets.  Ralph himself rode in front, in solitary dignity, his weapon jingling at his stirrup, his feather spruce and bright above his spare keen face; a couple of servants rode behind, fully armed and formidable looking, and then the train came behind—­beasts piled with bundles that rustled and clinked suggestively, and the men who guarded them gay with scraps of embroidery and a cheap jewel or two here and there in their dress.

But Ralph did not feel so gallant as he looked.  During these long country rides he had had too much time to think, and the thought of Beatrice and of what she would say seldom left him.  The very harshness of his experiences, the rough faces round him, the dialect of the stable and the inn, the coarse conversation—­all served to make her image the more gracious and alluring.  It was a kind of worship, shot with passion, that he felt for her.  Her grave silences coincided with his own, her tenderness yielded deliciously to his strength.

As he sat over his fire with his men whispering behind him, planning as they thought new assaults on the rich nests that they all hated and coveted together, again and again it was Beatrice’s face, and not that of a shrewd or anxious monk, that burned in the red heart of the hearth.  He had seen it with downcast eyes, with the long lashes lying on the cheek, and the curved red lips discreetly shut beneath; the masses of black hair shadowed the forehead and darkened the secret that he wished to read.  Or he had watched her, like a jewel in a pig-sty, looking across the foul-littered farm where he had had to sleep more than once with his men about him; her black eyes looking into his own with tender gravity, and her mouth trembling with speech.  Or best of all, as he rode along the bitter cold lanes at the fall of the day, the crowding yews above him had parted and let her stand there, with her long skirts rustling in the dry leaves, her slender figure blending with the darkness, and her sweet face trusting and loving him out of the gloom.

And then again, like the prick of a wound, the question had touched him, how would she receive him when he came back with the monastic spoils on his beasts’ shoulders, and the wail of the nuns shrilling like the wind behind?