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Page 247
"What are you doing here?" he asked furiously, but no louder than she had spoken.
"I had to speak to you," she replied. "I have noticed that Sir Heribert's servants pass to and fro listening when he is not by, and I do not think we will be able to be private at any other time without notice being taken of it."
He did not answer immediately, waiting for the passing of a wave of dizziness and nausea, a reaction to what he had almost done because of his baseless suspicion. With it also passed his fury at Sybelle. If he had not allowed himself to imagine what he knew to be ridiculous and impossible, there could have been no danger to her. He put down the knife.
"You find Sir Heribert unwholesome, too?" he asked, levering himself up to a sitting position.
"I do not know," she replied, pushing back her hood and perching herself on the edge of the bed. "When he first came in, his actions seemed strange to me, and the curiosity of his servants still seems excessive, but that could be owing to nervousness on first meeting you or to many other causes." Then she cocked her head inquiringly. ''You say 'unwholesome.' Did you find him so even later?"
Walter repeated his doubts of his own impartiality, and Sybelle nodded. She had pushed the bed curtain back when she seated herself so that the glow of the night candle illuminated her face; however, it looked all different in the dim, uncertain light. The eyes were dark and mysterious; the shadows, painted hollows in her temples and cheeks so that she lost the fresh bloom of girlhood; and the thrust of her full, moist, lower lip, shining intermittently as the light caught it, was a sensual invitation. In the few hours since Walter had parted from her, Sybelle seemed to have matured into a knowing woman.
"Then what will you tell Richard if you return to him immediately as you said you would?" she asked. "Heribert has, indeed, obeyed your summons to him. He speaks and proffers most fairly. You are not sure in your own mind, you say, whether he is what he seems and you are tarring him with your brother's blackness or whether he has wrapped his foulness in clean cloth. Would it not be most reasonable to write this to Richard and spend a little time with the man to judge him better?"
Sybelle had been delighted when Walter confessed he was

 
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