"My mother is dead!" he cried.
"No, not that. She is in no danger. She is well. She is more than well;
she is happy."
Gilbert was staring almost stupidly at his companion, not in the least
understanding that there could be any evil news about his mother if all
these things were true.
And yet it seemed strange that the abbot should lay stress upon the
Lady Goda's happiness, when Gilbert had been at death's door for many
weeks, and when, as he well knew, she was without news of him.
"Happy!" he echoed, half dazed.
"Too happy," answered the prelate. "Your mother was married when you
had been scarcely a month here with us."
Gilbert stared into the older man's face for one moment after he had
ceased speaking, and then sank back against the wall behind him with
something between a groan and a sigh. One word had struck the ground
from under his feet; the next was to pierce his soul.
"Who is her husband?" he asked under his breath.
Before the abbot answered, his grasp tightened upon Gilbert's hands
with a friendly grip that was meant to inspire courage.
"Your mother has married Sir Arnold de Curboil."
Gilbert sprang to his feet, as though he had been struck in the face by
an enemy. A moment earlier he could not have risen without help; a
moment later he fell backward into the abbot's arms.
Nothing that he had felt in his whole short life--not all the joys and
fears of childhood, which, after all, contains the greatest joys and
fears in life, compounded with the clash of his first fighting day and
the shock of seeing his father killed before his eyes--not all these
together could be compared with what he felt at that plain statement of
the dishonour done upon his house and upon his father's memory.
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