There was such chagrin in his voice that Igraine, remembering his many kindnesses, hung her head and felt unhappy.
"Do not be angry," she said; "I do not wish you to speak of this more."
"But, my dear child, the honour, the fame, the noise of it!"
Igraine almost smiled at his palpable dismay, for she knew that her words must have flustered him not a little. Radamanth mopped his bald head, for the season was sultry.
"No, niece, it is prejudice. Yet I assure you Gorlois is a most noble soul."
"If he were a seraph, uncle, I could not love him."
"You women are all fancy. Why, you have hardly seen the colour of him. Come, now!"
"Why, bless my soul, my wife never loved me till we had been married a month, and she had learnt my fibre."
Igraine thought a moment. Then she asked Radamanth a question.
"Would you marry her to a man she did not love or trust, simply because it brought gold?"
Radamanth saw himself rounded in the argument like a rat in a corner. He sat stroking his beard, and striving to look pleased.
"Think over it, my dear," he said presently.
Igraine jumped up, kissed him to show she bore no ill will, and ran away much troubled to find Lilith in the garden. She flung herself down beside the girl in the bower of laurels, and told her all that passed that morning in Radamanth's parlour. Lilith listened with her brown eyes deep with thought, and a quiet wonder. When Igraine had finished, Lilith took both her hands in hers, and, kneeling before her, looked up into her face.
Igraine put her arms round Lilith's neck, and kissed her.
Radamanth's words to the girl proved very true before many days had gone; his prophetic belief in Gorlois's mood found abundant justification in the event. Gorlois had the warm imagination of his race, an imagination that found extravagance and rich taste ready ministers to work his purpose. Igraine, met by all manner of devices on all possible occasions, began to realise the cares of those whom a purblind world insists on smothering with limitless favours.
Flowers were poured in upon her, worked into posies, garlands, shields, harps, crosses,--all bearing with them some mute plea for mercy. It might have been perpetual May-day in Radamanth's house, so flowered and scented was it. Flowers were followed by things more tangible, a pearl-set cithern, a great white hound, a gold girdle, a pair of doves in a cage of silver wire, a necklet of rich stones gotten from some Byzant mart. Gorlois seemed ready to send her all the finery in Winchester despite her messages and her words to him,--"My lord, I can suffer none of these things from you." Servants and slaves came down to Radamanth's house as though they had been sent from Sheba, while one of Radamanth's men went back from Igraine like an echo, bearing back the unaccepted baubles. It was a patient game, and rather foolish.