How strange was this meeting.  I had never forgotten the lady Blanche, but in a sense I had lived her memory down and mindful of my uncle’s counsel, had not sought to look upon her again, for which reason I kept away from Hastings where I thought that I should find her.  And now here she was in London and in my house, brought thither by fate.  Nor was that all, since those blue eyes of hers had re-lighted the dead fires in my heart and, seated there alone, I knew that I loved her; indeed had never ceased to love her.  She was more to me than all my wealth, more than anything, and alas! between us there was still a great gulf fixed.

She was not wed, it was true, but she was a highly placed lady, and I but a merchant who could not even call myself a squire, or by law wear garments made of certain stuffs which I handled daily in my trade.  How might that gulf be crossed?

Then as I mused there rose in my mind a memory of certain sayings of my wise old uncle, and with it an answer to the question.  Gold would bridge the widest streams of human difference.  These fine folk for all their flauntings were poor.  They came to me to borrow money wherewith to gild their coronets and satisfy the importunate creditors at their door, lest they should be pulled from their high place and forced back into the number of the common herd as those who could no longer either give or pay.

And after all, was this difference between them and me so wide?  The grandsire of Sir Robert Aleys, I had been told, gathered his wealth by trade and usury in the old wars; indeed, it was said that he was one who dealt in cattle, while Lord Deleroy was reported to be a bastard, if of the bluest blood, so blue that it ran nigh to the royal purple.  Well, what was mine?  On the father’s side, Saxon descended from that of Thanes who went down before the Normans and thereafter became humble landed folk of the lesser sort.  On the mother’s, of the race of the old sea-kings who slew and conquered through all the world they knew.  Was I then so far beneath these others?  Nay, but like my father and my uncle I was one who bought and sold and the hand of the dyer was stained to the colour of his vat.

Thus stood the business.  I, a stubborn man, not ill-favoured, to whom Fortune had given wealth, was determined to win this woman who, it seemed to me, looked upon me with no unkind eye since I had saved her from certain perils.  To myself then and there I swore I would win her.  The question was—­how could it be done?  I might enter the service of the King and fight his battles and doubtless win myself a knighthood, or more, which would open the closed gate.

Nay, it would take too long, and something warned me that time pressed.  That strange foreign man, Kari, said that Blanche was enamoured of this Deleroy, and although I was wrath with him, setting his words down to jealousy of any on whom I looked with kindness, I knew well that Kari saw far.  If I tarried, this rare white bird would slip from my hand into another’s cage.  I must stir at once or let the matter be.  Well, I had wealth, so let wealth be my friend.  Time enough to try war when it failed me.