human
Issa!
gpt
Issa!
human
This man; he is not known to you. How could it be?
gpt
Yet it is the truth, my father, answered the girl, steadily.
human
It is just a month ago that chance set us face to face--one day when I rode alone in the green drive.
gpt
And thereafter?
human
Once he came to the walled garden, adventuring the thousand chances of discovery. Yet how he managed to cross the stockade-line I know not, for I was frightened, and begged him to leave me. And this he did most courteously, only swearing that he would again return.
gpt
The third time?
human
That was the day--the day of the first May-bloom--the Ochre brook and the Doomsmen----
gpt
Yet never a word to me or to your mother?
human
It was not my secret,
gpt
The blame is mine, since I used the peril in which I stood to set a seal upon her lips. A true and loyal maid is your daughter, and it was only after she had twice said me nay that I resolved to take without the asking. So I came that day which we both remember, and waited under the alder bushes, and once again I missed my cast. Yet was the quest not altogether fruitless, for I carried away this token from my lady's hostile garden.
human
What gentleman could refuse to redeem so dear a pledge? You have seen how I took head in hand and sat me down under your own roof-tree, my good Gavan of the keep. Faith, it was an even chance on which side the platter would fall, but this time the luck was mine. We should have been leagues away in the sun's eye by now, only that a peevish boy would have his way.
gpt
And this--this is also true?
human
It is true.
gpt
Issa!
human
Issa!