But she bethought her that the need for him might not yet utterly be passed.

Not only in the affair of Garnache--in which he stood implicated as deeply as herself--might she require his loyalty, but also in the matter of what had befallen yesterday at La Rochette; for despite Fortunio's assurances that things had gone smoothly, his tale hung none too convincingly together; and whilst she did not entertain any serious fear of subsequent trouble, yet it might be well not utterly to banish the consideration of such a possibility, and to keep the Seneschal her ally against it.

So she told him now, with as much graciousness as she could command, that she fully realized her debt, and when, encouraged, he spoke of his reward, she smiled upon him as might a girl smile upon too impetuous a wooer whose impetuosity she deprecates yet cannot wholly withstand.
"I am a widow of six months," she reminded him, as she had reminded him once before.

Her widowhood was proving a most convenient refuge.

"It is not for me to listen to a suitor, however my foolish heart may incline.
Come to me in another six months' time." "And you will wed me then ?" he bleated.
By an effort her eyes smiled down upon him, although her face was a trifle drawn.
"Have I not said that I will listen to no suitor?
and what is that but a suitor's question ?" He caught her hand; he would have fallen on his knees there and then, at her feet, on the grass still wet with the night's mist, but that he in time bethought him of how sadly his fine apparel would be the sufferer.
"Yet I shall not sleep, I shall know no rest, no peace until you have given me an answer.