The blessed hour of sight, as she hath named it,
has come but twice since I have known her, and I can vouch for it
that all that she hath told me was true, for on the evening of
the Battle of Auray she said that the morrow would be an ill day
for me and for Charles of Blois. Ere the sun had sunk again he
was dead, and I the prisoner of Sir John Chandos. Yet it is not
every question that she can answer, but only those----"
"Bertrand, Bertrand!" cried the lady in the same mutterings far-away
voice, "the blessed hour passes. Use it, Bertrand, while you may."
"I will, my sweet. Tell me, then, what fortune comes upon me?"
"Danger, Bertrand--deadly, pressing danger--which creeps upon you
and you know it not."
The French soldier burst into a thunderous laugh, and his green
eyes twinkled with amusement. "At what time during these twenty
years would not that have been a true word?" he cried. "Danger
is in the air that I breathe. But is this so very close,
Tiphaine?"
"Here--now--close upon you!" The words came out in broken,
strenuous speech, while the lady's fair face was writhed and
drawn like that of one who looks upon a horror which strikes, the
words from her lips.
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