Lenore sat very still, listening absently to the muffled sound of wind and rain and beating waves, while her mind drank in the narrative that Alixe poured into her ears; and so did the one thing interweave itself with the other in her consciousness, that, in after time, the spirit of the lost Lenore walked forever in her mind amid the terrible grandeur of a mighty storm, lightning crowning her head, her hair and garments dripping with rain and blown about by the increasing wind. An eerie thing it was for these two young and tender women, lightly clad, to sit at this midnight hour in the gray fastnesses of the Twilight Castle, and, while the whirlwind howled without, to turn over in their thoughts the story of a young life so tragically cut off in the midst of its happiness and beauty. Alixe’s changeable eyes shone in the semi-darkness with a phosphorescent gleam, and her voice rose and fell and trembled with emotion as she poured into Lenore’s burning heart the tale of Gerault’s sorrow. “Five years agone, when I was but a maid of twelve, Seigneur Gerault was of the age of twenty-three. At that time this Castle, I mind me, was a merry place enow. Madame Eleanore had a great train of squires and demoiselles in those days, and thy lord kept a young following of his own—though he held Courtoise ever the favorite. At that time Gerault rode not to tournaments in Rennes, but bided at home with madame, his mother, and Laure, and the young demoiselle Lenore de Laval, niece to madame, a maid as young as thou art now. This maiden had come to Crépuscule when she was but a little girl, her own mother being dead, and madame loving her as a daughter. Gerault’s love for her was not that of a brother; yet because of their blood-relationship, there was little talk of their wedding. For all that, they two were ever together in company, and alone as much as madame permitted. They hawked, they hunted, and, above all, they sailed out on the sea. The Seigneur had a sailing-boat, and Madame Eleanore never knew, methinks, how many hours they spent on the waters of the bay. Child as I was, I envied them their happiness; and, though I went with them but seldom, I knew always how long they were together each day; and methinks I understood how precious each moment seemed.