that on her mantle there is marked a silver cross, which is surely sign enough that there is naught of evil in these strange powers which you say that she possesses.'
This argument of the Seneschal's appealed so powerfully to the Bohemian and to the Hospitaller that they at once intimated that their objections had been entirely overcome, while even the Lady Rochefort, who had sat shivering and crossing herself, ceased to cast glances at the door, and allowed her fears to turn to curiosity.
'Among the gifts which have been vouchsafed to my wife,' said Du Guesclin, 'there is the wondrous one of seeing into the future; but it comes very seldom upon her, and goes as quickly, for none can command it. The blessed hour of sight, as she hath named it, has come but thrice since I have known her, and I can vouch for it that all that she hath told me was true, for on the evening of the Battle of Auray she said that the morrow would be an ill day for me and for Charles of Blois. Ere the sun had sunk again he was dead, and I the prisoner of Sir John Chandos. Yet it is not every question that she can answer, but only those'
'Bertrand, Bertrand!' cried the lady in the same muttering far-away voice, 'the blessed hour passes. Use it, Bertrand, while you may.'
'I will, my sweet. Tell me, then, what fortune comes upon me?'
'Danger, Bertrand—deadly, pressing danger—which creeps upon you and you know it not.'
The French soldier burst into a thunderous laugh, and his green eyes twinkled with amusement. 'At what time during these twenty years would not that have been a true word?' he cried. 'Danger is the air that I breathe. But is this so very close, Tiphaine?'
'Here—now—close upon you!' The words came out in broken strenuous speech, while the lady's fair face was writhed and drawn like that of one who looks upon a horror which strikes the words from her lips. Du Guesclin gazed round the tapestried room, at the screens, the tables, the
