countess told Caretto that she
had several matters on which she needed his counsel, and retired with
him to the next room of the suite opening from the apartment in which
they had been sitting. For a minute or two the others sat silent, and
then Claudia said,

"You have changed much since I saw you last, Sir Gervaise. Then it
seemed to me scarcely possible that you could have performed the feat of
destroying the corsair fleet; now it is not so difficult to understand."

"I have widened out a bit, Lady Claudia. My moustache is really a
moustache, and not a pretence at one; otherwise I don't feel that I have
changed. The alteration in yourself is infinitely greater."

"I, too, have filled out," she said, with a smile. "I was a thin girl
then--all corners and angles. No, I don' t want any compliments, of
which, to tell you the truth, I am heartily sick. And so," she went
on in a softer tone, "you have actually brought my gage home! Oh, Sir
Gervaise,"--and her eyes filled with tears--"my cousin has told me! How
could you have been so foolish as to remain voluntarily in captivity,
that you might recover the gage a child had given you?"

"Not a child, Lady Claudia. A girl not yet a woman, I admit; yet it
was not given in the spirit of a young girl, but in that of an earnest
woman. I had taken a vow never to part with it, as you had pledged
yourself to bestow no similar favour upon any other knight. I was
confident that you would keep your vow; and although in any case, as
a true knight, I was bound to preserve your gift, still more so was I
bound by the thought of the manner in which you had presented it to me."

"But I could not have blamed you--I should never have dreamt of blaming
you," she said earnestly, "for losing it as you did."

"I felt sure, Lady Claudia, that had it been absolutely beyond my power
to regain it you would not have blamed me; but it was not beyond my
power, and that being so had I been obliged to wait for ten years,
instead of two, I would not have come back to you without it. Moreover,
you must remember that I prized it beyond all things. I had often
scoffed at knights of an order like ours wearing ladies' favours. I had
always thought it absurd that we, pledged as we are, should thus declare
ourselves admirers of one woman more than another. But this seemed to me
a gage of another kind; it was too sacred to be shown or spoken of, and
I only mentioned it to Caretto as he cross questioned me as