The mystery that seemed to envelop him; those hints at a past that was not good--but the measure of whose evil in her pure innocence she could not guess; his very melancholy, his misfortunes, and the deeds she had heard assigned to him, all had served to fire her fancy and more besides, although, until that moment, she knew it not.
Subconsciously all this had long dwelt in her mind.

And now of a sudden that self-deriding speech of Crispin's had made her aware of its presence and its meaning.
She loved him.

That men said his life had not been nice, that he was a soldier of fortune, little better than an adventurer, a man of no worldly weight, were matters of no moment then to her.

She loved him.
She knew it now because he had mockingly bidden her to think whether Kenneth had cause to be jealous of him, and because upon thinking of it, she found that did Kenneth know what was in her heart, he must have more than cause.
She loved him with that rare love that will urge a woman to the last sacrifice a man may ask; a love that gives and gives, and seeks nothing in return; that impels a woman to follow the man at his bidding, be his way through the world cast in places never so rugged; cleaving to him where all besides shall have abandoned him; and, however dire his lot, asking of God no greater blessing than that of sharing it.
And to such a love as this Crispin was blind--blind to the very possibility of its existence; so blind that he laughed to scorn the idea of a puny milksop being jealous of him.

And so, while she sat, her soul all mastered by her discovery, her face white and still for very awe of it, he to whom this wealth was given, pursued the odious task of wooing her for another.
"You have observed--you must have observed this insensate jealousy," he was saying, "and how do you allay it?
You do not.