By way of being diplomatic, he began by hinting that there were necessities in life, trivial no doubt, but inevitable, as sleep and supper.
"Lord John of Brissac is your friend," he meandered, "a strong lord, and a great; moreover, he hates those of Gambrevault, God chasten their souls! Fontenaye is no long ride from Gilderoy. Madame will lodge there till she can come by redress?"
Madame had no thought of being beholden to the gentleman in question. Jaspar understood as much from a very brief debate. Lord John of Brissac was forbidden favour, being as black a pard when justly blazoned as any seigneur of Gambrevault. The harper’s chin wagged on maugre her contradiction.
"We have bread for a day," he chirped, dropping upon banalities by way of seeming wise. "The nights are cold, madame, damp as a marsh. As for the water-pot----"
The assumption was made with an excellent unction that betrayed the seeming sincerity of the philosopher. Yeoland stared ahead over her horse’s ears, with a clear disregard for Jaspar and his discretion.
"We are like leaves blown about in autumn," she said to him, "wanderers with fortune. You have not grasped my temper. I warrant you, there is method in me."
"Strange method, madame, to ride nowhere, to compass nothing."
She turned on him with a sudden rapid gleam out of her passionate eyes.
The harper appealed to his favourite saint.
"St. Jude forfend that madame should follow such a marsh fire," he said.
They had drawn towards the margin of the heath. Southwards it sloped to the rim of a great pine forest, that seemed to clasp it with ebonian arms. The place was black, mysterious, impenetrable, fringed with a palisading of dark stiff trunks, but all else, a vast undulation of sombre plumes. Its spires waved with the wind. There was a soundless awe about its sable galleries, a saturnine gloom that hung like a curtain. In the vague distance, a misty height seemed to struggle above the ocean of trees, like the back of some great beast.
Yeoland, keen of face, reined in her jennet, and pointed Jaspar to this landscape of sombre hues. There was an alert lustre in her eyes; she drew her breath more quickly, like one whose courage kindles at the cry of a trumpet.