On the day after Laure’s flight, Madame Eleanore left the great dinner-table and went to her bedroom early in the afternoon. Once again, as a year ago, she was alone there, hovering over her priedieu. Only this day was not sunny, but cold and damp, and very gray. Eleanore was in her usual mood of lonely melancholy, but when Alixe tapped at the door she was admitted, and madame ceased her devotions and bade the girl come in and sit down to her embroidery frame beside the window. Latterly it had become a habit of Alixe’s to break in upon her foster-mother’s elected solitude, and to draw her, willy-nilly, out of her sadness. If madame perceived the kindly intention in these interruptions, she did not comment upon it, but accepted the maid’s devotion with growing affection.

When Alixe entered, madame also seated herself near the window, yet did not take up any work, leaving the tambour frame and spinning-wheel both idle in their places. She regarded Alixe for a few moments in silence, wondering why the young girl did not speak, finally putting her dulness down to the fact that it was but yesterday morning they had bidden Flammecoeur and his squire God-speed on their journey to Normandy. Their long sojourn at CrÉpuscule had brought a gayety to the Castle that made it doubly dull now that they were gone. Madame pondered for some time on the subject, and presently spoke of it.

“Sieur Bertrand hath a dreary sky for his journey.”

“But a promise of beauty in the land to which he goeth,” responded Alixe, with something of an effort.

“Mayhap. I have not been in Normandy.”

And here the conversation ended. They sat together, these two women, listening to the incessant beating of the heavy waves on the cliff far below, and to the tap, tap, of the rain upon the windows; but neither found it in her heart to speak again. Alixe was shading her bird from blue into green, and Eleanore sat with folded hands, her eyes looking far away, musing upon the nothingness of her life. Suddenly there came a clamor at the door. Somewhat startled, Eleanore called admittance, and immediately David the dwarf walked into the room, stepped to the right of the doorway, and ushered in his companion, announcing her gravely,—

“Soeur Celeste from the Couvent des Madeleines.”

The sub-prioress, her white cloak and veil damp and stringing with rain, came slowly into the room and courtesied, first to Eleanore, then to Alixe.

Madame rose hastily, in some surprise, and went forward.

“Give you God’s greeting, good sister,” she said.

The nun returned the salutation, and then, with some hesitation, indicated the little dwarf in a gesture that showed her desire that he should leave the room. Madame accordingly motioned him away, and when he was gone, turned to the nun with a hint of anxiety on her face. The new-comer did not hesitate in her mission. Leaning over, she asked eagerly,—

“Madame, is Angelique here, with you?”

Eleanore looked at her blankly. “Laure?—Laure is with you. Laure is—What sayest thou, woman?”

Soeur Celeste resignedly bent her head. For some seconds nothing was said. Alixe, her face grown ashen, her body changed to ice, rose, and moved to the side of madame. Then she asked softly, “What hath happened, good sister?”

“Angelique—Laure—the demoiselle—is not in the convent. We have searched for her everywhere. Her veil and wimple were found in her cell upon the bed. Beyond this there is no trace of her. This morning she came not to the church for prime, and we thought she had overslept. She hath so much fasted and prayed of late that Reverend Mother granted indulgence, and bade us let her rest. At breaking of the fast Soeur Eloise was despatched to her cell, and returned with word that she was not there. Since that hour even the daily services have been suspended, while we sought for her. In the garden we found footprints,—those of a woman, and of a man. Perchance they were hers—yet—”

“It is a lie! That is a lie!” burst from Eleanore’s white lips. “Woman, woman, unsay thy words! No man hath ever seen her,—my Laure!”

“I said it not, Madame Eleanore; I but said mayhap,” ventured the gentle sister, timidly. But Eleanore did not hear her. White, rigid, her every muscle drawn tense, she stood there staring before her into space; while Alixe, feeling this scene to be too intimate even for her presence, glided slowly from the room.

Immediately outside the closed door stood David the dwarf, moving restlessly from one spot to another, biting his thick lips, and working his heavy black brows with great nervousness. Seeing Alixe, he seized upon her at once.

“I know what it is: Laure hath gone away, hath she not?”

Alixe simply nodded.

“Yea, I know it,—with that scoundrelly trouvÈre!”

Alixe quivered as if she had been touched upon the raw; but David paid no attention to her movement of pain.

“Come,” he jerked out nervously; “come away from this room. Come below. I will tell thee what I saw in the fellow.”

The two of them walked silently across the broad upper hall and down the great staircase into the lower room, which was always deserted at this hour. Here Alixe and the dwarf seated themselves on tabourets at one of the long tables, and David began to talk. It seemed that he had watched Flammecoeur closely, and had seen a good deal of his attentions to Laure; knew how he rode with her to and from the priory, guessed Laure’s all too apparent feeling for him, and was aware that most of the hours in which the troubadour had supposedly hunted, hawked, or gone to St. Nazaire, had really been spent in the neighborhood of the priory, though how much he had seen of the nun, David could not know.

Alixe listened to him without much comment, and agreed in her heart with all that he said. But she was at a loss to comprehend her own bitterness of spirit at thought of what Flammecoeur had done. She loved Laure truly; yet these sensations of hers were not for Laure, but for herself alone; and this girl, so acute at reading the minds of others, failed entirely to read her own; for had she not soundly hated Flammecoeur? Had she hated him?

It was a heavy hour that these two, dwarf and peasant born, spent waiting for their lady to give some sign. At length, however, there were footsteps on the stairs, and both of them rose, as Eleanore, followed, not accompanied, by the white-robed nun, descended.

Madame was very erect, very brilliant-eyed, very white and stiff, but she had perfect control over herself. As she swept toward the great door, David could plainly see her state, and Alixe read well her heart; yet neither of them could but admire her splendid self-possession. Out of the Castle and into the courtyard she went, the three others following her, on her way to the keep. In the open doorway of the rough stone tower, she halted; and the dozen lolling henchmen within instantly started to their feet.

“My men,” she said, in a voice as steady and as commanding as that of a lord of CrÉpuscule, “my men, a great blow has fallen upon me, and a disgrace to all that dwell in this Castle. Laure, my daughter, your demoiselle, the lady of all our hearts, hath been stolen from the place of her consecration. She hath been abducted from the priory of the Holy Madeleine, by one that hath broken our bread, and received our hospitality. Bertrand Flammecoeur, the troubadour, hath brought dishonor upon Le CrÉpuscule, and I ask you all to avenge your lord and me!”

Here she was interrupted by a chorus begun in low murmurs of astonishment, and now risen to a roar of wrath. After a moment she raised her hand, and, in the silence that quickly ensued, began again,—

“In the name of your lord, I bid you avenge us! Ride forth, every man of you, into the countryside, in pursuit of the flying hound. Go every man by a different road, nor halt by day or night till you bring me tidings of my child. And to him that shall find and bring her back to me, will I give honor and riches and great love, such as I would give to none that was not of noble blood. Go, nor stay to talk of it.—Go forth in the name of God—and bring me back my child!”

The men needed no further urging to action. As she ceased to speak they sprang from their places, and began preparations for departure with a spirit that showed their devotion to madame and to Laure. Madame stayed in the courtyard till Soeur Celeste and the last henchman had ridden away; and then, when there was no more to see, she turned to Alixe, and, leaning heavily upon the young girl’s shoulder, slowly mounted to her darkening chamber and lay down upon her tapestried bed. Alixe moved gently about the room, bringing her lady such physical comforts as she could, though these were not many. Neither of them spoke, and neither wept. Eleanore lay motionless, staring out into the dusk. Alixe’s eyes closed every now and then, with a kind of deadly weariness that was not physical. But she did not leave madame.

After a long time, when it had grown quite dark, Alixe asked suddenly,—

“Wouldst have a message sent to Rennes, madame?”

“To Gerault? No, it is too late. What could he do? Nay, I will not have the shame of his house published abroad in the Duke’s capital. Speak of it no more.” And, obediently, Alixe was silent.

It was now long past the early supper hour, but neither of the women went downstairs. The thought of food did not occur to Eleanore. Alixe sat by the closed window, brooding deeply. Darkness had come over the sea, and with it clouds dispersed so that a few stars glimmered forth, and at times a moon showed through the ragged mists. Downstairs the young men and maidens had resorted to their usual evening amusements of games, but they played without spirit, and finally, one by one, heavy with unvoiced foreboding, crept off to rest. David the dwarf had not been among them at all to-night. Ever since the ending of supper he had sat outside the door of madame’s room, waiting, patiently, for some sound to come from within. Everything, however, was silent. From her bed the mother, tearless, bright-eyed, watched the broken moonlight creep along the floor, past the figure of Alixe. Her mind was filled with terrible things,—pictures of Laure, and of what the young girl was doubtless enduring. For a long time she contained herself under these thoughts, but finally, racked with unbearable misery, she started up, crying aloud,—

“Alixe! Alixe! Methinks I shall go mad!”

As she spoke, madame rose from the bed, stumbled across the floor, flung open one of the windows, and looked out upon the splendor of the tumbling, moonlit sea. After a moment or two she felt upon her arm a gentle touch, and she knew that Alixe was beside her.

“Mad with thy thoughts, madame? Indeed, meseemeth Laure will not die. Doubtless the Sieur TrouvÈre loveth her—”

She was interrupted by a long groan.

“Madame?” she whispered, in soft deprecation.

“Not die, Alixe? Not die? Dieu! It were now my one prayer for her that she might quickly die!”

“Nay, what is there so terrible for her, save that she hath brought upon herself damnation an she die unrepentant? Wouldst thou not have her live to repent and be shriven?”

Eleanore groaned again. “Thou art too young to understand, Alixe. Ah! her purity! her innocence! How she will suffer! There is no suffering like unto it.” Madame slipped to her knees, there by the window, and putting her arms upon the sill, buried her head in them, and drew two or three terrible breaths. Alixe, helpless, fighting to keep down her own secret woe in the face of this more bitter grief, felt herself useless. She remained perfectly still, looking out at the sea, but noting nothing of its beauty, till, all at once, madame began to speak again, in a muffled voice,—

“I remember well my wedding with the Sieur du CrÉpuscule. I was of the age and of the innocence of Laure. Never was mortal so happy as I, upon the day of the ceremony at Laval. I loved my lord, and he had given all his honor into my keeping. But had the bitterness of guilt been on me when I was brought home to Le CrÉpuscule, alone and a stranger in his house, I know not if I could have lived through the shame and bitterness of my first days. Thou canst not know, Alixe; but the humiliation of that time is as fresh in my memory as ’twere but yesterday. Ah! leave me now, maiden. Leave me alone. Thou’st been good and faithful to me, but a mother’s grief she must bear alone. Go thou to bed, child, and, in the name of pity, pray for thy sister!”

So she sent Alixe from the room, and made the door fast after her. After this she did not return to her place at the window, but began slowly to make ready for the night. When at length she was prepared, she wrapped herself closely in a warm woollen mantle, and went to her priedieu. Laure, from the priory, had ceased to accost Heaven. Therefore madame took her daughter’s place, and thence through the night ascended an unceasing, bitter, commanding prayer that Laure should be restored to her mother’s house, or else be mercifully received into the more accessible hereafter.

When morning dawned, her great bed had not been slept in, but throughout that day Eleanore sought no rest. She spent the hours passing from the hall to the keep and thence to the tower at the drawbridge, waiting, hoping, praying for tidings. During the afternoon three or four henchmen rode in, exhausted. But none of them had found any trace of Laure. One, however, who had taken the St. Nazaire road and had reached that town during the night, had learned that Flammecoeur and his page had been there on the afternoon of the day they left CrÉpuscule. And, upon further search, this man found a shop where the trouvÈre had bought a lady’s mantle and hood, both black. This was all the news that could be got; but it was enough to prove, without the least doubt, Flammecoeur’s guilt.

Late in the afternoon Alixe went to work among the falcons, changing some of them from their winter-house to the open falconry in the field. Madame, seeing her at work, went out and watched her for a time. Alixe answered her few remarks with respect, but would not talk herself. The girl was dark-browed to-day, and very silent, and madame, perceiving that something troubled her, shortly left her to herself, and began to pace the damp turf. Hither, presently, came David, with the news that Monseigneur de St. Nazaire had come.

With a cry of sudden relief madame hurried back to the Castle, where the Bishop awaited her. He was gowned as usual in his violet, with round black cap, and gauntlet cut to show his ring. And as she came into the great hall, he advanced to her with both hands outstretched and a look of trouble in his clear eyes.

“Eleanore, for the first time in many years I come to you in sorrow, to bring to you what comfort the Church can give,” he said gently, fixing his eyes upon her to read how she had taken her blow, and from it decide what his attitude toward her should be. For St. Nazaire had a great and affectionate respect for Eleanore, and he was accustomed to treat her with a consideration that he used toward no other woman. It was for this that he had come to her in her grief, at the first moment that he heard the news of Laure’s flight.

“Come thou into this room, where we can be alone,” she said quickly, leading him into the round armory that opened off the great hall immediately opposite the chapel. Half closing the heavy door, she sat down on a wooden settle, motioning the Bishop to a tabouret near at hand.

“Is there any news of her? What hast thou heard?” she asked eagerly, bending toward him.

“I come but now from the priory, where I chanced to go to-day. This morning the girl Eloise, a lay sister, she that was accustomed to ride hither from the priory with Laure, confessed to many rides and love-passages between herself and Yvain the young squire, while Bertrand Flammecoeur followed Laure.”

Madame drew a sharp breath, and the Bishop continued: “The girl is now under heavy penance; yet is she a silly thing, and in my heart I find no great blame for her.”

“Then there hath been no word—no news—of Laure? Left she no token in her cell?”

“Nothing, Eleanore, nothing.”

“Ah, St. Nazaire! St. Nazaire! how did we that cruel thing? How took we away from a young girl all her freedom, all her youth, all her love of life? Know I not enough of the woe of loneliness, that I should have sent her forth into that living death? Alas! alas! I am all to blame.”

“Not wholly thou, madame. Perhaps the Church also,” said the Bishop, softly.

Eleanore looked at him in something of amazement. It was the first time that he had ever suggested any criticism of the Church. But after these words had escaped him, the Bishop paused for a little and fixed upon Eleanore a look that she read aright. It told her many things that she had guessed before, many unuttered things that had drawn her closely to St. Nazaire; but it told her also that these things must never be discussed between them; that never again would the man be guilty of so heretical an utterance as that which he had just voiced.

After this he began to speak again, still in the same tone of sympathy, but with a subtle difference in the general tenor of his views. He told her, in a manner eloquent with simplicity, of his talk with Laure on the eve of her consecration. He reminded Eleanore that Laure had entered of her own free will upon the life of a nun. He recalled the girl’s contentment throughout the period of her novitiate; and finally, seeing that he had succeeded in obliterating some of the self-reproach in this woman to whom he was so sincerely attached, he began to prepare her for the blow that he was about to deal, to tell her what words could not soften, to inflict a wound that time could not heal, but which, according to the law of the Roman Catholic Church, he was bound to administer.

Eleanore listened to his plausibly logical phrases with close attention. She sat there before him, elbow on knee, her head resting on her hand, her eyes wandering over the armor-strewn walls. The Bishop talked around his subject, circling ever a little nearer to its climax; but he was still far from the end when madame, suddenly straightening up and looking full into his eyes, interrupted him to ask baldly: “Monseigneur, hast thou never, in thy heart, known the yearning for a woman’s love?”

“Many a time and oft, madame, I have felt love—a deeply reverent love—for woman; and I have rejoiced therein, and given thanks to God,” was the careful reply.

But Eleanore had begun her attack, and she would not be repulsed in the first onslaught. “And has no woman, Reverend Father, known thy love?” she demanded.

“Madame!” A pale flush overspread St. Nazaire’s face. “That question is not—kind,” he said haltingly, but without rebuke.

“Nay. I am not kind now. Make me answer.”

St. Nazaire looked at her thoughtfully, and weighed certain things in certain balances. Because of many years of the confessional and also of free confidence he knew Eleanore thoroughly,—knew how she had suffered every soul-torment; knew her unswerving virtue; sympathized with her intense loneliness. He prized her trust in him more than she was aware, and he feared to jeopardize that confidence now by whatever answer he should make. Ignorant of the purport of her questions, he yet saw that she was in terrible earnest in them. So finally he did the honest and straightforward thing. Answering her look, eye for eye, he said slowly: “Yea, Eleanore of Le CrÉpuscule, a woman hath known my love. What then?”

“Then if thou, a good man and as strong as any the Church ever knew, found that to human nature a loveless life is an impossibility, how shouldst thou blame a maid, high-strung, full of youth, vitality, emotions that she has not tried, for yielding to the same temptation before which thou didst fall? How is it right that the Church—that God—should demand so much?—should ask more than His creatures can give?”

“Eleanore! Eleanore! thou shalt not question God!”

“I do not question Him. It is—it is—” untried in this exercise, she groped for words. “It is what ye say He saith. It is what ye declare His will to be that I question.”

“What, Eleanore, have I declared His will to be? Have I yet blamed or chid the waywardness of Laure, whom indeed I loved as a dear daughter,—a child of purity and faith?”

“Then, then,” Eleanore bent over eagerly, and her voice shook,—“then, an thou blamest her not, St. Nazaire, thou wilt not—” she clasped her hands in an agony of pleading, “thou wilt not put upon her the terrible ban? Thou wilt not excommunicate her?”

It was only then that the Bishop realized how skilfully she had led up to her point. He had not realized that he was dealing with perception engendered by an agony of grief and fear. As she reached her climax, he sprang to his feet, and began to pace the room, hands clasped behind him, brows much contracted, head far bent upon his breast. Eleanore, meantime, had slid to her knees and watched him as he moved.

“If thou wilt spare her, ask what thou wilt of me. I will do her penance, whatever thou shalt decree. I will give money; I will give all that remains to me of my dower, freely and with light heart, to the Church. I will aid whomsoever thou wilt of thy poor, I—”

“Cease, Eleanore! These things cannot avail against the Church. Thou must not tempt, thou must not question; thou canst not understand the Law! I am but an instrument of that Law, and am commanded by it. Laure, the bride of Heaven, hath forsaken her chosen life. She must endure her punishment, being guilty of—thou knowest the sin. Next Sunday the ban must be put upon her. In doing so, I but obey a higher power. Eleanore, Eleanore, rise from thy knees! Thou art tearing at my heart! Peace, woman! Peace, and let me go!”

Eleanore, in her agony of despair, had crept to him and clasped his knees, mutely imploring the pity that he dared not show. Logic and reason he had put from him, holding fast to the tenets of that Church that had made him what he was. In all his career he had not been so tried, so tempted, to slip his duty. But, through the crucial moment, he did not speak; and after that he was safe from attack.

After many minutes the mother loosed her clasp of him, and ceased to moan, and let him go; for she saw that he could not help her. And as he passed slowly out of the room, she rose to her feet and looked after him blindly. Then she groped her way to the door, crossed the great hall, and, with her burden, ascended the stairs and went to her own room. Next morning, when the Bishop said mass in the chapel, madame, for the first time in thirty years on such an occasion, was not present. Nor did monseigneur seem astonished at the fact, but left his sympathy for her before he rode away to St. Nazaire.

All that afternoon and night, indeed, till after dawn of the next day, weary henchmen of the keep came straggling in on spent horses, fruitless returned from a fruitless quest. And when they were all back again, and the hope of seeing Laure was gone, the shadow of loneliness settled a little lower over the great pile of stone, and the silence within the Castle grew more and more intense to the aching heart within.

In the general desolation of Castle life Alixe, the unnatural child of peasant blood, came very close to the heart of Eleanore. Through the long, budding spring madame fought a terrible battle with herself against an overpowering desire for an end of life, for the peace of death. And in these times Alixe often drew her away from herself by getting her to hunt and to hawk,—two amusements in which madame had been wont to indulge eagerly in her youth, and which she found were still possible for her, though she had grown to what she thought old-womanhood. Besides this, she and Alixe took the long walks that Laure had formerly delighted in; and the two ventured into many a deep cave in the sea-cliffs, and explored many crevices that no native of the coast would enter. In these places they found fair treasures of the sea, but were never accosted by any of the supernatural beings said to inhabit such spots. Nor, though they listened many times for it at twilight, did either of them hear, a single time, the long, low, wailing cries of the spirit of the lost Lenore.

In this way some pleasures entered unawares into the life of Eleanore. Perhaps there were other pleasures also, so simple and so familiar that she took no cognizance of them as such. Perhaps of a morning, in the spinning-room, when her fingers flew under some familiar, pretty task, and her ears were filled with the chatter of the demoiselles, who still strove after light-hearted joys amid their gray surroundings, she found forgetfulness of Laure’s bitter disgrace. Or better still, when, at the sunset hour, she paced the grassy falcon-field, watching the glories of the sea and sky, there came to her heart that benison of Nature that God has devised for all of us in our days of woe. But when she was alone, in early afternoon, or, most of all, through the silent night-watches, she was sometimes overcome with sheer terror of herself and of her solitude. At such times she fought the creeping horror with what weapons time had given her, battling so bravely that she never suffered utter rout.

In a dim, quiet way the weeks sped on, leaving behind them no trace of what had been, nothing for memory to hang her lightest fabric on. In all the weeks that lay between Laure’s flight and the coming of July, Eleanore could remember distinctly just one talk beside the bitter one with St. Nazaire. And this other was with neither Alixe nor the Bishop, who, however, made it a point to come once in a fortnight to Le CrÉpuscule.

On a fair morning in May, as the dawn crept up out of the east not many hours after midnight, Eleanore rose, in the early flush, and, clothing herself lightly, left her room with the intention of going into the fields to walk. No one was to be seen as she entered the lower hall; but, to her amazement, the great door stood half open, and through it poured a draught of morning air, rich with the perfume of blossoming trees and fertile fields. Wondering that Alixe should have risen so early, Eleanore left the Castle and hurried out of the courtyard into the strip of meadow lying between the wall and the dry moat. Here, near the north edge of the cliff, sitting cross-legged in the grass, sat David the dwarf, holding in his hand something to which he talked in a low, solemn tone. Advancing noiselessly toward him, Eleanore perceived that it was a dead butterfly that he had found, and to which he was pouring out his soul. Amazed at the first phrases that caught her ears, she halted a few steps behind him, and there learned something of the thoughts that lay hidden in his volatile brain.

“White Butterfly, White Butterfly, thou frail and delicate child of summer, speak to me again! Say, hast thou found death as fair as life, thou White and Still? Came the messenger to thee unawares, or didst thou see his face and know it? Wast thou confessed, White Butterfly? Wentest thou forth absolved of all thy fluttering sins?

“Say, wanderer, didst love thy life? Wast afraid or sorrowful to leave it, in its dawn? Or foundest thou comfort in the thought of eternal rest for thy battling wings?

“And I, O living Thistledown, teach me my way! Shall I follow thee into the great world, to roam there seeking why men love to live? Or shall I also, like thee, leave it all? Shall I go, knowing nothing of the joy of life? Or, again, shall I practise a weary courtesy, and remain to bring echoes of laughter into that Twilight Castle, for the sake of the love I bear its Twilight Lady? Her life, my flutterer, hath been such a dream of tears as even thou and I, dead thing, have never known. Yea, many a time while I laughed and shouted at the light crew of damsels that sleep there now, my heart hath bled for her. O Ghost of the Morning, know you what Eleanore, our lady, thinks of me, the fool? And yet, yet I do so deeply pity her—”

“Thou pityest me, David?” echoed Eleanore, advancing till she stood before him, forgetful of how her appearance must startle him.

David looked up at her, winking slowly, like one that would bring himself out of a dream-world into reality. “Lady of Twilight, thou’rt a woman, lonely and mournful, forsaken of thy children. Therefore I grieve for thee,” he said slowly, gazing at her with his big eyes, but not rising from where he sat.

“A woman,” said Eleanore, looking at him with a half-smile, and echoing his tone,—“a woman doubtless is always to be pitied; and yet what man deems it so? Master David, ye are all born of women, and ye are all reared by them. Afterwards, in youth, ye wed, use us as your playthings for an hour, and then leave us in your gray dwellings, while ye fare forth to more manly sports and exploits. There in solitude we bear and rear again, and later our maidens wed and our sons depart from us, and for the last time, in our age, we are left alone to die. Truly, David, thou mayest well pity!”

David’s wide mouth curved in a bitter smile.

“Even so, Madame Eleanore. And now, for fifteen years, I have lived as a woman lives. Mayhap by now I know her life better than other men—if, indeed, I am a man, being but little taller than the animals. And all these things said I to my dead friend here in my hand.”

“’Tis now fifteen years since thou camest with my lord to CrÉpuscule?”

“Ay, fifteen. I was then a boy of about such age. Fifteen years in Le CrÉpuscule by the sea! It is a lifetime.”

Madame sighed. Then her face brightened again as she looked down at the dwarf. “What was the life of thy youth, David? ’Tis a tale I have never heard.”

“’Tis but a little tale. Like my dead butterfly, I wandered. I come of a race of dwarfs,—all straight-backed, know you, and not ill to look upon. My father was a mountebank. My mother, who measured greater than was customary among us, cooked and sewed and travelled with us whithersoever we went in our wagon. When I was young,—at the age of five or thereabouts,—I began to assist my father in his entertainments. When I was fifteen we were in Rennes for the jousting season, and there thy lord saw me, bought me, and brought me back to you, lady, to be your merry jester. But indeed my laughter hath run low, of late. Long years I have bravely jested through; but now the Twilight spell is creeping over me, and merriment rises no more in my heart. Indeed, I question if I should not beg leave of thee to go forth into the world again for a little time, to learn once more the song of joy. Yet when thou art near, and I look out upon the sea, and behold the sun lifting his glory out of the eastern hills, I ever think I cannot go,—I cannot leave this gentle home of melancholy.”

“Thou art free, David, if freedom is mine to bestow upon thee. Indeed, I could not ask that any one remain in this sad and quiet place, of any than his own will. Go thou forth into the world! Go forth to joy and life and laughter. Fill thy little heart again with jests. Forget the brooding silence of Le CrÉpuscule, and laugh through the broad world to thy heart’s content. Yet we shall miss thee sorely, little man.”

Madame stopped speaking, and there was a pause. David seemed to have no response to make to her words. Instead he bent over the earth, digging a little hole in the sod. Into this he laid the dead form of his white butterfly. When he had covered it from sight with the black earth, and patted a little earthen mound over it, he rose to his feet with an exaggerated sigh.

“So I bury my friend—and my freedom. My desire is dead, Madame Eleanore, with my freedom. I will remain here among you women-folk, and keep you sad company or merry as you demand. Look! The rim of the sun is pushing over the line of the distant trees!”

“Yea, it is there—far away—in the land where Laure may be, deserted, mayhap, and a wanderer, cast out from every dwelling that she enters!”

Eleanore whispered these words, more to herself than to David. They were an expression of her eternal thought. The dwarf heard them, and sought some comfort for her. But her expression forbade comfort; and, in the end, he did not speak at all. The two of them stood side by side and watched the sun come up the heavens. Presently the Castle awoke, and shortly Alixe came out to the field to feed the young niais and the mother-birds in the falcon-nests. So Eleanore, when she had given the young girl greeting, returned to her solitude in the Castle, finding her heart in some part relieved of its immediate burden.

One by one the lengthening days passed. June came into the world, and palpitated, and glowed with glory and fire, and then died. During this time not a word had come from distant Rennes to tell the Lady of CrÉpuscule how Gerault fared. The midsummer month came in, and the young men and maidens of the Castle grew gay with the heat, and made riotous expenditure of the riches of Nature. That year the whole earth seemed a tangle of flowers and rich meadow-grass, with which young demoiselles played havoc, while the squires and henchmen hawked and hunted and drank deep. These days stirred Eleanore’s heart once more to love of life, and woke the sleeping soul of Alixe to strange fits of passionate yearning after unattainable ideals. The living earth brought fire to every soul, and the pinched melancholy of winter was dead and forgotten.

On the night of the seventh of July the Castle sat unusually late at meat, for the Bishop had arrived unexpectedly, and, being in a merry mood, deigned to entertain the whole Castle with tales and jests. Just in the middle of a story of Church militant in the war of the three Jeannes, there came the grating noise of the lowering drawbridge, a faint echo of shouts from the men-at-arms in the watch-tower, and the clatter of swift hoofs over the courtyard stones. Half a dozen henchmen ran to open the great door, while Eleanore rose with difficulty to her feet. Her heart had suddenly come into her throat, and she had turned deathly white with an unexpressed hope and an inarticulate fear. There was a little pause. The new-comer was dismounting. Then, after what had seemed a year of waiting, Courtoise walked into the hall, advanced to his liege lady, and bent the knee.

“Courtoise!” gasped Eleanore, faintly. “Courtoise—thy message!”

“Madame,” he cried, “I bring joyful tidings from my lord! He sends thee health, greeting, and duty, and prays you to prepare the Castle for a great feast; for in a week’s time he brings home his bride from Rennes!”