Page 331 - A Knight of the White Cross

pleasantly enjoy my dream. Besides, what should I do if I left the Order
without home, country, or means, and with naught to do but to sell my

sword to some warlike monarch? Besides, Caretto, I love the Order, and
deem it the highest privilege to fight against the Moslems, and to uphold

the banner of the Cross."

"As to that, you could, like De Monteuil and many other knights here,

always come out to aid the Order in time of need. As to the vows, I am not
foolish enough to suppose that you would ask to be relieved from them,

until you had assured yourself that Claudia was also desirous that you
should be free."

"It is absurd," Gervaise said, almost impatiently. "Do not let us talk any
more about it, Caretto, or it will end by turning my head and making me

presumptuous enough to imagine that the Lady Claudia, who only saw me
for three or four days, and that while she was still but a girl, has been
thinking of me seriously since."

"I do not know Claudia's thoughts," Caretto remarked drily, "but I do know

that last year she refused to listen to at least a score of excellent offers for
her hand, including one from a son of the doge himself, and that without
any reasonable cause assigned by her, to the great wonderment of all,

seeing that she does not appear to have any leaning whatever towards a life
in a nunnery. At any rate, if at some future time you should pluck up heart

of grace to tell her you love her, and she refuses you, you will at least have
the consolation of knowing that you are not the only one, by a long way,
whose suit has been rejected. And now as to our affairs here. Methinks that

tomorrow that battery will open fire upon us. It seems completed."

"Yes, I think they are nearly ready," Gervaise said, turning his mind
resolutely from the subject they had been discussing. "From the palace wall
I saw, before I came down here, large numbers of men rolling huge stones

down towards the church. Our guns were firing steadily; but could they
load them ten times as fast as they do, they would hardly be able to stop the

work, so numerous are those engaged upon it."