Saint-Pol cursed his fate. Here he was, tied to the French girl.

'My lord,' he said, 'I cannot obey you. My duty is to take Madame to
Paris. That is my master's command.'

'Well,' said Richard, 'then I shall go alone. Once more I shall go. I am
sick to death of this business.'

'My lord Richard,' cried Saint-Pol, 'I am no man to command you. Yet I
say, Go. I know not what has passed between your Grace and my sister
Jehane; but this I know very well. It will be a strange thing'--he
laughed, not pleasantly--'a strange thing, I say, if you cannot bend
that arbiter to your own way of thinking.' Richard looked at him coldly.

'If I could do that, my friend,' he said, 'I should not suffer
arbitration at all.'

'The proposition was not mine, my lord,' urged Saint-Pol.

'It could not be, sir,' Richard said sharply. 'I proposed it myself,
because I consider that a lady has the right to dispose of her own
person. She loved me once.'

'I believe that she is yours at this hour, sire.'

'That is what I propose to find out,' said Richard. 'Enough. What news
have they in Paris?'

Saint-Pol could not help himself; he was bursting with a budget he had
received from the south. 'They greatly admire a sirvente of Bertran de