“Yes, Lenore, happiness. That word sounds strange in thine ears from me; yet listen while I speak. Gerault, my dead son, brought thee out of a life of sunshine and gayety and fair youth into this grim Twilight Castle; and now thou hast entered, with all of us, from twilight into blackest night. But thou hast in thee what is lacking in me, and in those that dwell here as part of our race; thou’rt young, and thou hast had a joyous youth. Thou knowest what I long since forgot: that, in this world, there is a country of happiness. Now it is I, Gerault’s mother, that bids thee leave these shades of ours and return to thy real home. I bid thee go back again into thy youth, to thy father’s house, whither, if thou wilt, I will myself in all love convey thee; and I will tell thy father how thou hast been unto me all that—more than—a daughter should be; that I love thee as one of my own blood; that I am sore to give thee up—” “Madame! Madame Eleanore! Thou must not give me up! Surely thou wilt not!” Lenore turned a quivering face up to the other; and madame read her expression with deep amazement. “Give thee up! Do I not tell thee that at the thought my heart is like to break? Nay, thou’rt my daughter always; and when thou wilt, this is thy home. Yet for the sake of thy youth—” “Madame—” Lenore sat up straighter, and looked suddenly off to the windows of her room, her face by turns gone deathly white and rosy red: “madame, this Twilight Castle is my double home. Here dwelt Gerault, my beloved lord, and—and here shall dwell his child—the child that is to be born to me—the new Lord of Le Crépuscule.” “Lenore!—Lenore!” “My mother!” Then, as the sunset died from the distant west, these two women, united as never before, sat together upon Gerault’s bed, clasping each other close and mingling their tears and their laughter in a joy that neither had thought to know again. [Illustration] _CHAPTER ELEVEN_ THE WANDERER [Illustration]