That journey back to Stafford was a speedy one, and soon they
stood again in the inn-yard out of which she had ridden but an
hour ago. Avoiding the common room, Crispin ushered her
through the side door by which she had quitted the house. The
landlord met them in the passage, and looking at Crispin's face
the pallor and fierceness of it drove him back without a word.

Together they ascended to the chamber where in solitude she had
spent the day. Her feelings were those of a child caught in an
act of disobedience, and she was angry with herself and her
weakness that it should be so. Yet within the room she stood
with bent head, never glancing at her companion, in whose eyes
there was a look of blended anger and amazement as he observed
her. At length in calm, level tones:

"Why did you run away?" he asked.

The question was to her anger as a gust of wind to a
smouldering fire. She threw back her head defiantly, and fixed
him with a glance as fierce as his own.

"I will tell you," she cried, and suddenly stopped short. The
fire died from her eyes, and they grew wide in wonder - in
fascinated wonder - to see a deep stain overspreading one side
of his grey doublet, from the left shoulder downwards. Her
wonder turned to horror as she realized the nature of that
stain and remembered that one of her men had fired upon him.

"You are wounded?" she faltered.