‘Eustacie, that am I,’ she murmured.  ’But he is dead—­they killed him; I swathe blood where he had waited for me.  His child’s danger brought him from the grave.’

’No, no.  Look at me, sister Eustacie.  Listen to me.  Osbert brought him home more dead than alive—­but alive still.’

‘No!’ she cried, half passionately.  ’Never could he have lived and left me to mourn him so bitterly.’

‘If you knew—­’ cried Philip, growing indignant. ’for weeks he lay in deadly lethargy, and when, with his left hand, he wrote and sent Osbert to you, your kinsfolk threw the poor fellow into a dungeon, and put us off with lies that you were married to your cousin.  All believed, only he—­sick, helpless, speechless, as he was—­he trusted you still; and so soon as Mericour came, though he could scarcely brook the saddle, nothing would hold him from seeking you.  We saw only ruin at La Sablerie, and well-nigh ever since have we been clapped up in prison by your uncle.  We were on the way to Quinet to seek you.  He has kept his faith whole through wounds and pain and prison and threats,—­ay, and sore temptation,’ cried Philip, waxing eloquent; ’and, oh, it cannot be that you do not care for him!’

‘Doubt not my faith, sir,’ said Eustacie, proudly; ’I have been as true to him as if I had known he lived.  Nor do I know who you are to question me.’

At this moment the child pressed forward, holding between her tow careful plump hands a red earthenware bowl, with the tisane steaming in it, and the yellow petals strewn over the surface.  She and Philip had taken a great fancy to each other, and while her mother was busy with the other patients, she had been left to her quiet play with her fragments of glass, which she carried one by one to display, held up to the light, to her new friends; who, in his weak state, and after his long captivity, found her the more charming playmate because she so strangely reminded him of his own little sisters.  She thought herself his little nurse, and missing from his broth the yellow petals that she had been wont to think the charm of tisane, the housewifely little being had trotted off, unseen and unmissed, across the quadrangle, over the embankment, where she had often gathered them, or attended on the ‘lessive’ on the river’s brink; and now she broke forth exultingly, ’Here, here is the tisane, with all the soucis.  Let me feed you with them, sir.’

‘Ah! thou sweet one,’ gasped Philip, ’I could as soon eat them as David could drink the water!  For these—­for these—–!’ and the tears rushed into his eyes.  ’Oh! let me but kiss her, Madame; I loved her from the first moment.  She has the very face of my little sweeting, (what French word is good enough for her?) didst run into peril for me, not knowing how near I was to thee?  What, must I eat it?  Love me then.’