girl blinked none. True to his guidance, he blinked.

'Go home to your brother, my daughter; go home to Saint-Pol-la-Marche.
At the worst, remember that there are always two arks for a woman in
flood-time, a convent and a bed.'

'I shall never choose a convent,' said Jehane.

'I think,' said the abbot, 'that you are perfectly wise.'

I suppose the alternative struck a sudden terror into her; for the abbot
abruptly records in his book that 'here her spirit seemed to flit out of
her, and she began to tremble very much, and in vain to contend with
tears. I had her all dissolved at my feet within a few moments. She was
very young, and seemed lost.'

'Come, come,' he said, 'you have shown yourself a brave girl these two
days. It is not every maid can sacrifice herself for a Count of Poictou,
the eldest son of a king. Come, come, let us have no more of this.' He
hoped, no doubt, to brace her by a roughness which was far from his
nature; and it is possible that he succeeded in heading off a mutiny of
the nerves. She was not violent under her despair, but went on crying
very miserably, saying, 'Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?'

'God knoweth,' says the abbot, 'this was a bad case; but I had a good
thought for it.' He began to speak of Richard, of what he had done and
what would live to do. 'They say that the strain of the fiend is in that
race, my dear,' he told her. 'They say that Geoffrey Grey-Gown had
intercourse with a demon. And certain it is that in Richard, as in all
his brothers, that stinging grain lives in the blood. For testimony look