A deep groan, born of this, her final world-wound, came from Eleanore’s gray lips. Alixe gave a long scream, and then fell forward upon her knees and began to mutter senseless words of prayer. Courtoise huddled himself up on the floor, and let fatigue and grief strive for the mastery over him. Only Lenore uttered no sound. She, the youngest of them there, and the most bereaved, stood perfectly still. One of her hands was pressed hard against her forehead; and she looked as if she were trying to recall some forgotten thing. Presently she whispered to herself a few indistinguishable words, and a faint smile hovered round her lips. Finally, seeing the piteous plight of Courtoise, she laid one hand upon his lowered head and said gently,— “Courtoise, thou art weary, and wet, and spent with riding. Rise, dear squire, and seek thy bed, and rest. ’Tis very late—and thou’rt so weary. Go to thy rest.” Eleanore looked at her, the frail girl, in amazement. Then she came round and took Lenore’s hand, and said: “Thou sayest well; ’tis very late, Lenore, and thou art also lightly clad. Come thou to thy bed, and let Alixe to hers. Come, my girl.” Lenore made no resistance, and went with madame toward the stairs; Alixe stared after them as if they had both been mad, for she had never known a blow that stuns the brain. Lenore suffered herself to be led quietly up the stairs, and, reaching her own room, which was dark save for the light that came through from madame’s open door, she dropped off her wide bliault, and lay down, shivering slightly, in the cold bed. She was numb and drowsy. Madame, bending over her, watched and saw the eyelids slowly close over her great blue eyes, till they were fast shut; and the young Lenore slept—slept as sweetly as a babe. Of the night, however, that madame spent, who dares to speak in unexpressive words? What the slow-passing, dark-robed hours brought her, who shall say? Her last loss broke her spirit; and she felt that underneath the heavy, all-powerful hand of the Creator-Destroyer, none might stand upright and hope to live. Gerault had suffered, as now he gave, great sorrow. Eleanore had never felt herself close to his heart, as she had once been close to the heart of that daughter whom she had sacrificed to an unwilling God. But now, in the knowledge of his death, the memory of Gerault’s coldness and of his elected solitude went from her, and she recalled only the justice, the strength, the self-reliance of him. Gradually her memory drew her back through his manhood, through his youth and his boyhood, to the time of his infancy, when the little, helpless, dark-eyed babe had come to bless the loneliness of her own young life. And with this memory, at last, came tears,—those divine tears that can wash the direst grief free of its bitterness. As the dawn showed in the east, and rose triumphant over the dying storm, madame crept to her bed, and laid her weary body on the kindly resting-place, and slept.