A Maid of Brittany: A RomanceKnowles, Mabel Winifred
History
A Maid of Brittany: A Romance
Knowles, Mabel Winifred
Brittany (France) -- History -- 1341-1532 -- Fiction
He was looking up into those eyes, reading all their message of pity and
tenderness, till in his own there dawned something less than despair.
"Thou knowest, Gabrielle?" he whispered, and for answer she bent,
kissing the trembling lips.
How fast rushed the voiceless chaos in his brain! Whirling faces long
dead looked into his as they passed, voices were crying in his ears of
the memories of old sins; and yet, through the mists and vanishing forms
those tender eyes looked down into his; and beyond, far away in the
distance, a Voice Which had calmed that other tempest of wind and waves
called softly his name.
A lost soul!—a lost soul! What use was it to call? He had sinned too
deeply for aught but damnation, swift and terrible, damnation to which
he must turn his shuddering eyes as the hand of Death claimed him. And
yet, those eyes which looked into his still spoke their message of hope.
She, this angel of purity and goodness, knew all his guilty secrets, and
yet—she loved him; her kiss of tender love and forgiveness still
lingered on his parched lips. Was it then so impossible that he should
find a forgiveness greater than that of earth? His eyes wandered
involuntarily from the face above him to the pictured image of a
Figure,—a Figure thorn-crowned, suffering, dying,—a Figure of Love
incarnate, with wide-stretched Arms which seemed to invite him to Their
embrace. The voice of Father Ambrose rose clearer and sweeter, but it
was not the Latin prayers which held the dying man’s attention, but a
Voice, more sweet, more clear than all, which seemed to soothe the
tempest of his soul.
Then with a lightning flash another memory stole upon him. Gwennola de
Mereac,—the girl he had tried to wrong more cruelly than he had her
brother, the innocent girl who perhaps had already suffered the last
agony of death through his sin and treachery.
"Gwennola?" he whispered faintly, and the peace which had stolen over
him seemed for the moment shaken to its foundation as he listened for
the answer.
It was Diane who replied. Slipping from Yvon’s side, she knelt beside
him, looking gladly into his eyes.
"She is safe," she whispered, with a happy sob. which told the tale of
the great joy that deliverance had brought to her; "she is safe!"
Guillaume de Coray’s eyes closed. Yes! she was safe, and the golden
gates of mercy which he had fancied to see slowly opening were not shut
against him by reason of this deadly sin. And so the mocking, cruel
voices sank slowly to rest—those voices which cried in his ears that
terrible sentence of eternal death. And though the bodily pains grew
ever more agonizing, he could smile once more into the beautiful face so
close to his.
"Forgiven?" he whispered in a faint, yet awestruck tone, whilst with a
last effort he strove to clasp his hands in prayer. "Forgiven?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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