Two or three hours later the door was opened and her father entered.  Glancing at him she saw that little sleep had visited him that night, for he looked old and very weary, so weary that she motioned to him to sit upon the stool.  This he did, breathing heavily and muttering something about the steepness of the tower stairs.  Presently he spoke.

“Eve,” he said, “is your proud spirit broken yet?”

“No,” she answered, “nor ever will be, living or dead!  You may kill my body, but my spirit is me, and that you will never kill.  As God gave it so I will return it to Him again.”

He stared at her, with something of wonder and more of admiration in his look.

“Christ’s truth,” he said, “how proud I could be of you, if only you’d let me!  I deem your courage comes from your mother, but she never had your shape and beauty.  And now you are the only one left, and you hate me with all your proud heart, you, the heiress of the Claverings!”

“Whose estate is this,” she answered, pointing to the bare stone walls.  “Think you, my father, that such treatment as I have met with at your hands of late would breed love in the humblest heart?  What devil drives you on to deal with me as you have done?”

“No devil, girl, but a desire for your own good, and,” he added with a burst of truth, “for the greatness of my House after I am gone, which will be soon.  For your old wizard spoke rightly when he said that I stand near to death.”

“Will marrying me to a man I hate be for my good and make your House great?  I tell you, sir, it would kill me and bring the Claverings to an end.  Do you desire also that your broad lands should go to patch a spendthrift Frenchman’s cloak?  But what matters your desire seeing that I’ll not do it, who love another man worth a score of him; one, too, who will sit higher than any Count of Noyon ever stood.”

“Pish!” he said. “’Tis but a girl’s whim.  You speak folly, being young and headstrong.  Now, to have done with all this mummer’s talk, will you swear to me by our Saviour and on the welfare of your soul to break with Hugh de Cressi once and forever?  For if so I’ll let you free, to leave me if you will, and dwell where it pleases you.”

She opened her lips to answer, but he held up his hand, saying: 

“Wait ere you speak, I have not done.  If you take my offer I’ll not even press Sir Edmund Acour on you; that matter shall stand the chance of time and tide.  Only while you live you must have no more to do with the man who slew your brother.  Now will you swear?”

“Not I,” she answered.  “How can I who but a few days ago before God’s altar and His priest vowed myself to this same Hugh de Cressi for all his life?”

Sir John rose from the stool and walked, or, rather, tottered to the door.

“Then stay here till you rot,” he said quite quietly, “for I’ll give you no burial.  As for this Hugh, I would have spared him, but you have signed his death-warrant.”