After the night of Gerault’s passion, twelve days ebbed and flowed away without any incident of moment in the Castle. How much bitter heart-life was enacted in that time, it had indeed been difficult to tell. Lenore wondered, constantly, as she looked into the faces about her and questioned them as she refused to question her own heart. If, beneath that cloak of lordly courtesy and calmness, Gerault could hide such a grief as she knew was buried in his soul; if she herself found it so easy to conceal her own knowledge of that bitterest of all facts, that she was a wife unloved,—what stories of mental anguish, of long-hidden torture, might not lie behind the impassive masks around her. There was Madame Eleanore, madame of the commanding presence and infinitely gentle manners. What was it that had generated the expression of her eyes? Lenore had scarcely heard the name of Laure, thought only that there had been a daughter in CrÉpuscule who had died long since; and so she wove a little history of her own to account for that haunted look so often to be found in madame’s dark orbs. Gerault she knew. Alixe puzzled her, but there also she found food for her morbidness. Courtoise and the demoiselles she did not consider; but David the dwarf held possibilities. The young woman’s new-sharpened glance quickly discovered that the jester suffered also from the devouring malady, and she wondered over and pitied him also.

Indeed, at this time, Lenore was in an abnormal and unhealthy frame of mind. It seemed to her that all the world lived only to hide its sorrows. But her melancholy speculations concerning the nature of the griefs of others saved her from the disastrous effects of too much self-analysis. Her love for Gerault, to which she always clung, led her to pity him as he would not have believed she could have pitied any one; and, unnatural as it seemed, she brooded as much over his sorrow as over her own. Melancholy she was, indeed, and older by many years than when she had first come to Le CrÉpuscule. Sometimes the fact that Gerault did not know how much she knew brought her a measure of comfort, but it made her uneasy, also, for she was not sure that she was not wrongfully deceiving him. She could not bring herself to confess to Father Anselm what she felt no one should know; and neither did she find it in her heart to tell Gerault himself of her inadvertent discovery, though had she but done this last, all might have come right in the end. But from day to day she put away from her the thought of speaking, and from day to day she drew closer into herself, till she was shut to all thought of confiding in him who had the right to know the reason of her unhappiness.

Gerault, however, was not unobserving, and he noticed the change in her very early in its existence. It was an intangible thing, elusive, changeable, varying in degree. All this he realized; but, man-like, never guessed the reason for it, never knew that Lenore herself was unconscious of it. Did she desire to coquet with him, render him uneasily jealous of every one on whom she turned her eyes? If so, it was useless, for the knight believed himself incapable of jealousy in regard to her. He had married her for the sake of his mother, and for Le CrÉpuscule,—much as the fact did him dishonor. In the very hour of their highest love, his thoughts had been all for another; and when she slept he had left her side to cry into the night and the silence, unto that other, of whom this young Lenore had never heard. Despite these confessed things, the Seigneur Gerault felt in some way hurt when the timid shadow of his wife no longer haunted him by day, nor stretched to his protecting arm by night. She had withdrawn from him into herself, and even his occasional half-hours of devotion failed to bring any light into her eyes, though she treated him always with half-tender courtesy. Her lord was not a little puzzled by her new manner, but he took it in his own way; and there was presently a stiffness of demeanor between the two that would have been almost laughable had it not been so pathetically cruel to Lenore.

The month of July passed away, and August came into the land. Brittany, long blazing with sunlight, lay parching for want of rain. The moors grew brown and dusty, and the meadow flowers bloomed no more. But the blue sea shimmered radiantly day by day, and the sunsets were ever more glorious and more red.

On a day in the first week of the last summer month, when Anselm had found the temperature too great for the casting of choice paragraphs of Cicero before the unheeding demoiselles, when the Castle reeked with the smell of cooking, and the air outside was heavy with the odor of hard-baked earth, Gerault sat in the long room alone, reading Seneca from an illuminated text. A heretical document this, and not to be found in a monastery or holy place; yet there were in it such scraps of homely wisdom and comfort as the Seigneur—something of a scholar in his idle hours—had failed to find in Holy Scripture.

In its dimly lighted silence the long room was, at this hour, a soothing place. The row of small casement windows were open to the sea, and two or three swallows, coming up from the water below, flitted through the room, and once even a sleek and well-fed gull came to sit upon a sill and flap his wings over the flavor of his last fish.

Gerault’s back was turned to the light; yet he knew these little incidents of the birds, and took pleasure in them. A portion of his mind rejoiced lazily in the quiet and solitude; the rest was fixed upon the Latin words that he translated still with some lordly difficulty. He found himself in the mood to consider the thoughts of men long dead, and was indulging in the unsurpassed delight of the philosopher when, to his vast annoyance, Courtoise pushed aside the curtains of the door, and came into the room followed by another man. Gerault looked up testily; but as he uttered his first word of reproach, his eye caught the dress of his squire’s companion, and he broke off with an exclamation: “Dame! Thou, Favriole?”

“May it please thee, Seigneur du CrÉpuscule,” was the reply, as the new-comer advanced, bowing. He was elaborately and significantly dressed in a parti-colored surcoat of blue and white silk, emblazoned behind and before with the coronet and arms of Duke Jean of Brittany. His hosen were also parti-colored, yellow and blue, and the round cap that he held in his hand was of blue felt with a white feather. At his side hung the instrument of his calling, a silver trumpet on a tasselled cord; for he was a ducal herald, and, before he spoke, Gerault knew his errand.

“Welcome, welcome, Favriole!” he said kindly. “What is thy message now? Surely not war?”

“Nay, Seigneur Gerault! A merrier message than that!” Lifting his trumpet to his lips, he blew upon it a clear, silvery blast, and, after the rather absurd formality, began: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Be it known to all princes, barons, knights, and gentlemen of the Duchy of Brittany and the dependency of Normandy, and to the knights of Christian countries, if they be not enemies to the Duke our Sire,—to whom God give long life,—that in the ducal lists of Rennes in Brittany, upon the fifteenth day of this month of August in this year of grace 1381, and thereafter till the twentieth day of that month, there will be a great pardon of arms and very noble tourney fought after the ancient customs, at which tourney the chiefs will be the most illustrious Duke of Brittany, appellant, and the very valiant Hugo de Laci, Lord in vassalage to his Grace of England, of the Castle Andelin in Normandy, defendant. And hereby are invited all knights of Christian countries not at variance with our Lord Duke, to take part in the said tourney for the glory of Knighthood and the fame of their Ladies.”

Favriole finished, smiling and important, and from behind him rose a little buzz of interest. For, at sound of the trumpet, almost all the Castle company had hurried from their various retreats to learn the meaning of the untoward sound. In this group, not foremost, standing rather a little back from the rest, was Lenore, gravely regarding Gerault, where he sat with the parchment before him. She had recognized Favriole, the herald, for a familiar figure in the lists at that long-past tournament where she had first thought of being lady of her lord; and she grew a little white under the memories that the herald brought her. Gerault had seen her at the first moment of her coming, and, as soon as Favriole finished his announcement, beckoned her to his side. She came forward to him quietly, and took her place, acknowledging the pleased salute of the visitor with the slightest inclination of her golden head. When she was seated at the table, Gerault, who had risen at her coming, spoke:

“Our thanks to you, Sir Herald, for your message, which you have come a long and weary way to bear to the one spurred knight in this house. And devotion to our Lord, Duke Jean, who—” Gerault paused. His mother had just come to the room and halted on the threshold, a little in front of the general group, her eyes travelling swiftly from Favriole’s face to that of Lenore. Gerault, his thought broken, hesitated for an instant, and turned also to look at his wife. Instantly Lenore rose, and advanced a step or two to his side. Then she said in a curiously pleading tone,—

“I do humbly entreat my lord that he will not refuse to enter this tournament; but that he will at once set out for Rennes, there to fight for—for ‘the glory of his Knighthood, and the—the fame of his—Ladies’!”

When Lenore had spoken she found the whole room staring at her in open amazement. Gerault gave his wife a glance that brought her a moment’s bitter satisfaction,—a look filled with astonishment and discomfort. Long he gazed at her, but could find no softening curve in her white, set face. Every line in her figure bade him go. At length, then, he turned back to Favriole, with something that resembled a sigh, and continued his speech.

“Sir Herald, carry my name for the lists; and my word that on the fifteenth day of this month I shall be in Rennes, armed and horsed for the tourney. My challenge shall be sent anon.—Courtoise! Take thine ancient comrade to the keep, and find him refreshment ere he proceeds upon his way.”

Courtoise bowed, wearing an expression of mingled pleasure and disapproval, and presently he and the herald left the room together, followed by all the young esquires. After their disappearance the demoiselles also wandered off to their pursuits, and presently Gerault, Eleanore, and Lenore were left alone in the long room. Eleanore stood still, just where she was, and looked once, searchingly, from the face of her son to that of his wife. Then she addressed Gerault: “See that thou come to me to-night, when I am alone in my chamber. I would talk with thee, Gerault.” And with another look that had in it a suggestion of disdain, madame turned and went out of the room.

When she was gone the knight drew a long sigh, and then, with an air of apprehensive inquiry, faced Lenore. At once she rose and, with a very humble courtesy, started also to depart. But Gerault, whose bewilderment at the situation was changing to anxiety, said sharply: “Stay, Lenore! Thou shalt not go till we have spoken together.”

Immediately she returned to her place and sat down. She gave him one swift glance from under her lashes, and then remained in silence, her eyes fixed upon the floor.

At the same time the Seigneur got to his feet and began to pace unevenly up and down the room. His step was sufficient evidence of his agitation; but it was many minutes before he suddenly halted, turning to his wife and saying in a tone of command: “Tell me, Lenore, why thou biddest me go forth into this tournament.”

“Ah, my lord—do not—I—” she paused, and, from flushing vividly, her face grew white again: “Thou wilt be happier in Rennes, my lord.”

“How say you that? Were I not happier at home here with my bride?”

“Asks my lord wherefore?” answered Lenore, in a tone containing something that Gerault could not understand.

“Nay, then, I ask thee naught but this: wouldst thou, all for thyself, of thine own will, have me go? Dost thou in thy heart desire it?”

Lenore drew her head a little high, and looked him full in the face: “For myself, for mine own selfish desires, of mine own will, I entreat thee by that which through thy life thou hast held most dear, to go!”

Gerault stared at her, some vague distrust that was entering his mind continually foiled by the open-eyed clearness of her look. Finally, then, he shrugged his shoulders, and, as he turned away from her, he said: “Be satisfied, madame. I do your bidding. I give you what pleasure I can. In ten days’ time I shall set off; and thou wilt be unfettered in this CrÉpuscule!”

And with this last ungenerous and angry taunt, the Seigneur, his brain seething with some emotion that he could not define, strode from the room. Lenore rose as he left her, and followed him, unsteadily, halfway to the door. He went out of the Castle without once looking back, and when he was quite gone, the young girl felt her way blindly to the chair where she had sat, and crouching down in it, burst into a flood of repressed and desperate tears.

When Gerault left Lenore’s side, he was no whit happier than she. After the herald had made his announcement of the tourney, and Gerault had begun his reply, it was his intent to refuse to go, though in his secret heart he longed eagerly to be off to that city of gay forgetfulness. But when his wife, Lenore, the clinging child, besought him, with every appearance of sincerity, to leave her, he heard her with less of satisfaction than with surprised disappointment. Now he fought with himself; now he questioned her motive; again he longed for Rennes and the tourney. Finally, there rushed over him the detestable deceit in his own attitude; and he began to curse himself for what, sometimes, he was,—the most intolerant and the most selfish of tyrants. In these varying moods Gerault rode, for the rest of the afternoon, over the dry moors, hawk on wrist, but finding his own thoughts, unhappy as they were, more engrossing than possible quarries. He returned late—when the evening meal was nearly at an end; and he perceived, with dull disappointment, that Lenore was not at table. Madame presently informed him that she lay in bed, sick of a headache; and this was all the conversation in which he indulged while he ate his hurried meal. But as soon as grace was said and the company had risen, Gerault started to the stairs. Instantly his mother caught his sleeve and held him back, saying,—

“Go not to thy room. She has perchance fallen asleep by now; and she should not be wakened, for she hath been very ill. Seek thou rather my bedchamber, and there presently I will come to thee; for I have somewhat that I would say to thee, Gerault.”

Feeling as he had sometimes felt when, in his early boyhood, he had waited punishment for some boyish misdeed, the Seigneur obeyed his mother, and went up to her room, which was now wrapped in close-gathering shadows. Here, a few moments later, Eleanore found him, pacing up and down, his arms folded, his head bent upon his breast, a dark frown upon his brows. The windows were open to the evening, and, like some witchcraft spell, its sweetness entered into Gerault, penetrating to his brain, and once again turning his thoughts to the spirit that haunted all Le CrÉpuscule for him.

Madame came into the room, drawing the iron-bound door shut behind her, and pushing the tapestry curtain over it. Then, without speaking, she crossed the room, seated herself on her settle beside the window, and fixed her eyes on the moving form of her son. Under her look Gerault grew more restless still; and he was about to break the silence when presently she said, in a low, rather grating tone: “Know, Gerault, that I am grieved with thee.”

He turned to her at once with a little gesture of deprecation; but she went on speaking:

“Thou hast brought home from Rennes a wife: a fair maid and a gentle as any that hath ever lived; and moreover one that loves thee but too well. In her little time of dwelling here she hath, by her quiet, lovely ways, crept close into my heart, that was erstwhile so bitterly empty. And having her here, and seeing her growing devotion to thee, her continual striving to please thee in thine every desire, methought that thou, a knight sworn to chivalry, must needs treat her with more than tenderness. Yet that hast thou not, Gerault. Dieu! Thou’rt all but cruel with her! God knows thy father came to be not over-thoughtful in his love of me. Yet had he neglected and spurned me in our early marriage as thou hast this bride of thine, I had surely made end of myself or ever thou camest into the world. Shame it is to thee and to all mankind how—”

“Madame! Madame!—Forbear!”

At his tone, Eleanore held her peace, while Gerault, after a deep pause, in which he regained his self-control, began,—

“Canst thou remember, my mother, a talk that we—thou and I together in this room—held one afternoon more than a year agone? ’Twas in this room, the day before I went last to Rennes. Thou didst entreat me to bring thee back a wife to be thy daughter in the place of Laure.

“At that hour the idea was impossible to me. Thou knowest—’fore God thou knowest—the suffering that time has never eased for me. A thousand times I had vowed then, a hundred times I swore thereafter, that the image of mine own Lenore should never be replaced within my heart; and it holds there to-day as fair and clear as if it were but yesterday she went.

“Many months passed away, madame, and I saw this golden-haired maiden about Rennes,—in the Ladies’ Gallery in the lists, and at feasts in the Castle; yet I had never a thought in my heart of wedding with her. Then—late in the spring—St. Nazaire sent me message of Laure’s disgrace, her excommunication; and my heart bled for thee. I sent out many men to search my sister, but not one ever gathered trace of her. Then, when there was no further hope of restoring her to thee, the idea of marriage came to me for the first time as a duty—toward thee. My whole soul cried out against it. Lenore de Laval reproached me from the heaven where she dwells. And yet—in the end—for thy sake, madame, I brought home with me the gentle child men call my wife.

“I confess it to thee only: I do not love her. Yet indeed none can say that I have used her ill, save as I could not bring myself falsely to act the ardent lover. If she hath been unhappy, then am I greatly grieved. Yet what hath she not that women do desire in life? What lacks there of honor or of pleasure in her estate? Moreover, if she has lost her own mother, hath she not gained thee, dear lady of mine? Mon Dieu, madame,—think not so ill of me. I swear that for me she yearns not at all. Even this afternoon, when all of you had departed from the long room, she did implore me, with sincerest speech, that I depart at early date for Rennes. How likes you that? And moreover, to all my questioning, she did stoutly deny that my going would be for aught but her own pleasure, and would in no way grieve her heart.” And Gerault stared upon his mother with the assured and exasperated look of a doubly injured man.

Madame Eleanore drew herself together and set her lips in the firm resolve still to treat her son with consideration. When she began to speak, her manner was calm and her voice low and quiet; yet in her eyes there gleamed a fire that was not born of patience. “So, Gerault! Doubtless all thou sayest is sooth to thee; yet I would tell thee this: when thou left’st her alone, I came upon her still sitting in the long room, leaning her head upon the table where thou hadst sat, weeping as if her heart was like to break. And when her sobs were still I brought her up to her room and caused her to remove her garments and to seek her bed, though all the while she shook with inward grief, till Alixe brought her a posset, and bathed her head in elder-flower water, and then, at last, she slept.”

“And gave she no name to thee as cause for her malady?”

“Art thou indeed so ignorant of us? Or is it heartlessness? Wilt thou go to Rennes?”

“Hath she not required me to go? Good Heavens, madame! what wouldst have me do?” he answered with weary impatience.

“Gerault, Gerault, if I could by prayer or anger make thee to understand for one instant only! Ah, ’tis the same tale that every woman has to tell. It was so with me. In my early youth I was brought from bright Laval, where I was a queen of gayety and life, to rule alone over this great Twilight Castle. Thy grandam was dead; and there was no other woman of my station here. In a few months after my home-coming as a bride, thy father rode away to join the army of Montfort in the East. From that time I saw my lord but a few weeks in every year; for the war lasted till I had reached the age of four-and-thirty. Thou camest to cheer my loneliness; and then, long after, Laure. And at last, when Laure was in her first babyhood, seventeen years agone, the long struggle ended at Auray; and then my lord, sore wounded in his last fight, came home. Alas! I was no happier for his coming. He had suffered much, and he was no longer young. We two, so long separated, were almost as strangers one to the other. Thou wast his great pride; dost remember how he loved to have thee near him? And many a time it cut me to the heart to hear the bloody, valorous tales he poured into thine ears; for I knew by them that he meant thee to do what he had done. It was not till he lay in his mortal sickness that we came back one to the other; but he died in my arms, whispering to me such words as I had never had from him before. That last is a sweet memory, Gerault; but the tale is none the less grievous of my young life here. And there is the more pity of it that mine is not the only story of such things. Many and many is the weary life led by some high-born lady in her castle, while her lord fights or jousts or drinks his life out in his own selfishness. Through those long years of the war of the Three Jeannes, I suffered not alone of women; and how I suffered, thou canst never know. Do thou not likewise with thy frail Lenore. Stay with her here a little while, and make her life what it might be made with love.”

Gerault listened in non-committal silence. When she finished he turned and faced her squarely: “Hast made this prate of my father and thee to Lenore?” he asked severely.

“Gerault!” The exclamation escaped involuntarily; when it was out Eleanore bit her lip and drew herself up haughtily. “Thou’rt insolent,” she said in a tone that she would have used to an inferior.

In that moment her son found something in her to admire, but the man and master in him was all alive. “Madame, we will waste no further words. I crave the honor to wish you a good-night.” And with a profound and ironical bow, he turned from the room, leaving Eleanore alone to the darkness, and to what was a defeat as bitter as any she had ever known.

Through the watches of the night this woman did not pray, but sat and meditated on the immense question that she had herself raised, and to which she had not the courage to give the true answer. Through her nearest and dearest she had learned the natures of men, knew full well their only aims and interest: prowess in arms, hunting, hawking, drinking, and, when they were weary, dalliance with their women. But was this all? Was this all there was for any woman in the mind of the man that loved her? The idea of rebellion against the scorn of men was not at all in her mind. She only wondered sadly how she and others of her sex came to be born so keenly sentient, so open to heart-wounds as they were. And she divined that her question burned no less in the brain of the young Lenore than in her own, though neither of them ever spoke of it together. Nor did either make any roundabout inquiries as to Gerault’s intentions with regard to Rennes. Not so, however, the demoiselles of the Castle. Courtoise was under a hot fire of inquisition throughout most of the following two days; but for once he himself was uncertain of his lord’s move, and presently there was a little air of joy creeping over the place in the shape of a hope that the Seigneur was going to remain in CrÉpuscule. This, indeed, was the secret idea of Courtoise; and only David the dwarf refused to entertain a suspicion that Gerault would not ride to Rennes for the tourney.

David judged well; for Gerault went to Rennes. Lenore knew on the tenth of the month that he would go. Madame remained in doubt till the day before the departure.

On the morning of the twelfth the whole Castle was astir by dawn. Gerault and his squire, bravely arrayed, came into the great hall at five o’clock, and sat down to their early meal. On the right hand of the Seigneur was Lenore, not eating, only looking about her on the fresh morning light, and again into Gerault’s face. She was not under any stress of emotion. She was, rather, very dull and heavy-eyed. Yet down in her heart lay a smothered pain that she felt must come forth before long, in what form she could not tell. She and Gerault did not talk much together. There was a little strain between them that was none the less certain because it was indefinable, and it was a relief to the young wife when madame finally appeared. Lenore saw Eleanore’s face with something of surprise. Never had it been so cold, so expressionless, so like a piece of chiselled marble; and looking upon her son, it grew yet harder, yet colder. But when madame, after some little parley with Courtoise, turned finally to Lenore, the child-wife found something in that face that came dangerously near to melting her apathy, and freeing the flood of grief that lay deep in her heart.

Half an hour later the knight and his squire were in the courtyard, where their horses stood ready for the mount. The little company of the Castle gathered close about their master, watching him as they might have watched some mythical god. Indeed, he was a brave sight, as he stood there in the early sunshine, flashing with armor, a gray plume floating from his helmet, and one of Lenore’s small gloves fastened over his visor as a gage. Lenore beheld this with infinite, gentle pride, as she stood fixing his great lance in its socket. Presently two of the squires helped him to mount to the saddle; and when he was seated, he lifted Lenore up to him to give her good-bye. A few tears ran from her eyes, and rolled silently down his breastplate, on which they gleamed like clustered diamonds. But Lenore wiped them away with her hair, that they might not tarnish the metal of his trappings; and by that act, perhaps, Gerault lost a blessing.

The last kiss that he gave her was a long one, and his last words almost tender. Then, putting her to the ground again, he saluted his mother, though her coldness struck him to the heart; and, after a final farewell to the assembled company, he turned and gave the sign of departure to Courtoise.

Spur struck flank. At the same instant, the two horses darted forward to the drawbridge, across which they had presently clattered. Alixe, who had been a silent spectator of the scene of departure, was standing near Lenore; and now she leaned over and would have whispered in the young wife’s ear; but Lenore could not have heard her had she spoken. The child stood like a statue, blind to everything save to the blaze of passing armor, deaf to all but the echo of flying hoofs. Here she stood, in the centre of the courtyard, alone with her strange little life, watching the swift-running steed carry from her all her power of joy. With straining eyes she saw the two figures disappear down the long, winding hill; and when they had gone, and only a lazily rising dust-cloud remained to mark their path, she stayed there still. But presently Eleanore came to her side and took her cold hand in a hot pressure. And then, as the two bereft women looked into each other’s eyes, the frozen grief melted at last, and the flood burst upon them in all its overwhelming fury.