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Page 242
game of chess, spar with words, and talk sense. Sybelle had attracted him by her beauty, but his attention had been fixed by her intelligence. Now there was a ripening. He saw her intelligence wedded to his interests and directed to the advancement of his purposes.
Sybelle asked again about entertainment for Sir Heribert, and Sir Roland replied. Walter was content to leave the decision to them. He wondered, now that he had seen so clear an instance of Sybelle's quick perception and devoted attention to his welfare, whether there might be more sense than he had originally thought to one suggestion she had made repeatedly. She insisted that he would be of more value to Richard's cause as the powerful holder of five considerable estates than as a single knight with his troop.
Despite the innocent look and unfaltering voice, Walter had had grave doubts as to the genuineness of the sincerity Sybelle displayed. Love her as he did, Walter suspected that Sybelle was more interested than she would admit in removing him from the rebel cause. Not that he suspected her of favoring the king's purpose. The passion with which she insisted upon the right of landholders to rule their estates as they wished was not counterfeit. Plainly Sybelle liked the idea of an absolute ruler no more than he did. However, Sybelle was perfectly willing for others, already engaged in that battle, to continue to fight it without assistance from her betrothed, and Walter's personal loyalty to Richard weighed far less in her scales than other topics.
One was the notion that it was an abomination that land belonging to Walter should remain for one minute longer than absolutely necessary in anyone else's powerand Sybelle made not the faintest effort to conceal this opinion. Walter would have been horrified at his future wife's greed if it had not been apparent that she was not thinking primarily of lost profit. In fact, she had said very seriously, with a worried frown that amused Walter excessively since it implied that she felt she might have to convince him of the truth of her assertion, that if his brother had been so bad a landlord, it might be necessary to put effort into the land for several years before they could hope to draw on it for men or supplies.
However, there was some strong emotion, besides Sybelle's itch to get her hands on the land, that Walter could not identify clearly. He thought of it as Sybelle's reluctance that

 
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