"Well, boy," said the marshal, smiling as if not ill pleased at his
boldness, "what do you think of me?"
"I think, sir," said Laurence, simply, "that you have grown older
since I saw you in the lists at Thrieve."
It seemed to Laurence that the words were given him. And all the time
he was saying to himself: "Now I have done it. For this he will surely
put me to death. He cannot help himself. Why did I not stick to it
that I was an Irelander?"
But, somehow, the answer seemed like an arrow from a bow shot at a
venture, entering in between the joints of the marshal's armour.
"Do you think so?" he said, with some startled anxiety, yet without
surprise; "older than at Thrieve? I do not believe it. It is
impossible. Why, I grow younger and younger every day. It has been
promised me that I should."
And setting his elbow on the sill of the window, Gilles de Retz looked
thoughtfully out upon the cool dusk of the rose garden. Then all at
once it came to him what was implied in that unlucky speech of
Laurence's. The grim intensity returned to his eyes as he erected
himself and bent his brows, white with premature age, upon the boy,
who confronted him with the fearlessness born of youth and ignorance.
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