“But I could not have blamed you —­ I should never have dreamt of blaming you,” she said earnestly, “for losing it as you did.”

“I felt sure, Lady Claudia, that had it been absolutely beyond my power to regain it you would not have blamed me; but it was not beyond my power, and that being so had I been obliged to wait for ten years, instead of two, I would not have come back to you without it.  Moreover, you must remember that I prized it beyond all things.  I had often scoffed at knights of an order like ours wearing ladies’ favours.  I had always thought it absurd that we, pledged as we are, should thus declare ourselves admirers of one woman more than another.  But this seemed to me a gage of another kind; it was too sacred to be shown or spoken of, and I only mentioned it to Caretto as he cross questioned me as to why I refused the offer of ransom; and should not have done so then, had he not been present when it was bestowed.  I regarded it not as a lightly given favour, the result of a passing fancy by one who gave favours freely, but as a pledge of friendship and as a guerdon for what I had done, and therefore, more to be honoured than the gifts of a Republic freed from a passing danger.  Had you then been what you are now, I might have been foolish enough to think of it in another light, regardless of the fact that you are a rich heiress of one of the noblest families in Italy, and I a knight with no possessions save my sword.”

“Say not so, Sir Gervaise,” she said impetuously.  “Are you not a knight on whom Genoa and Florence have bestowed their citizenship, whom the Holy Father himself has thanked, who has been honoured by Pisa, and whom Ferdinand of Naples has created a Knight of the Grand Cross of St. Michael, whom the grand master has singled out for praise among all the valiant knights of the Order of St. John, who, as my cousin tells me, saved him and the fort he commanded from capture, and who stood alone over the fallen grand master, surrounded by a crowd of foes.  How can you speak of yourself as a simple knight?”

Then she stopped, and sat silent for a minute, while a flush of colour mounted to her cheeks.

“Give me my gage again, Sir Gervaise,” she said gently.  In silence Gervaise removed it from his neck, wondering greatly what could be her intention.  She turned it over and over in her hand.

“Sir Knight,” she said, “this was of no great value in my eyes when I bestowed it upon you; it was a gage, and not a gift.  Now it is to me of value beyond the richest gem on earth; it is a proof of the faith and loyalty of the knight I most esteem and honour, and so in giving it to you again, I part with it with a pang, for I have far greater reason to prize it than you can have.  I gave it you before as a girl, proud that a knight who had gained such honour and applause should wear her favour, and without the thought that the trinket was a heart.  I give it to you now as a woman, far prouder than before that you should wear her gage, and not blind to the meaning of the emblem.”