The Forest Lovers

Cried Prosper here, "What did he want, this fatherly Abbot?"

"My lord," said Isoult, "he sought to have me put away."

"Well, child," Prosper chuckled, "he has got his wish."

"He wished it long ago, lord," she said; "before I was marriageable."

"And it was not to thy taste?"

"No, lord."

"It was not of that then that thou wert La Desirous?"

"No, lord," said Isoult in a low voice.

"So I thought," was Prosper's comment to himself. "The friar was out."

She went on to tell him of her service with the Abbey as laundry-maid,

then as scullery-girl; then she spoke of Galors. She told him how this

monk had seen her by chance in the Abbey kitchen; how he sought to get

too well acquainted with her; how she had fled the service and refused

to go back. Nevertheless, and in spite of that, she had had no peace

because of him. He chanced upon her again when she was among the crowd

at the Alms Gate waiting for the dole, had kept her to the end, and

spoken with her then and there, telling her all his desire, opening

all his wicked heart. She fled from him again for the time; but every

day she must needs go up for the dole, so every day she saw him and

endured his importunities. This had lasted up to the very day she saw

Prosper: at that time he had nearly prevailed upon her by his own

frenzy and her terror of the Abbot's, threat. She never doubted the

truth of what he told her, for the Abbot's privy mind had been

declared to much the same purpose to Mald her mother.

"But this privy mind of his," said Prosper, "must have swung wide from

its first leaning, which seems to have been to preserve thee. Could he

not have ruined thee without a charter? An Abbot and a cook-maid!

Could he not have ruined thee without a rope?"

"My lord," she replied, "I think he was merciful. I was to be hanged

by his desire; but there was worse with Galors."

"Ah, I had forgotten him," Prosper said.

She had spoken all this in a low voice through which ran a trembling,

as when a great string on a harp is touched and thrills all the music.

Prosper thought she would have said more if she dared. Although she

spoke great scorn of herself and hid nothing, yet he knew without

asking that she had been truthful when she told him she was pure. He

looked at her again and made assurance double; yet he wondered how it

could be.

"Tell me, Isoult," he said presently, "when thou sawest me come into

the quarry, didst thou know that I should take thee away?"