"
At the words the Lady Yolande Sangazure (whom we have met before) was aware
of a crimson flood mounting swiftly to her exquisite temples. Strange to
add, the same phenomenon might have been observed in a score of damosels
belonging to the best families in the district. The hall seemed suffused in
a ruddy glow that was certainly not reflected from the exiguous pile of
post-Crusading fuel smouldering on the great hearth.
"Tush!" broke in the cracked voice of a withered old dame, "your news is
old. Not only hath the so-called fever vanished but my lord himself hath
followed it."
"Gone!" The cry was echoed by twenty voices; twenty embroidery-frames fell
from forty arrested hands, while nine-and-thirty dismayed eyes fixed
themselves upon the maliciously-amused countenance of the speaker. Only
one, belonging to the Lady Beauregarde, who squinted slightly, remained as
though unmoved by the general commotion.
"Moreover," continued the old dame, "report saith that with him went his
leman, who, having some art in necromancy, transformed her beauty to the
semblance of a witch and provided her own dowry by the sale, to certain
addle-pated wenches, of charms for which her lover himself prepared the
market."
"But--his fever?" an impetuous voice broke in.
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