_Wistfully I deliver up to you my simple story, knowing that the first suggestion of “historical novel” will bring before you an image of dreary woodenness and unceasing carnage. Yet if you will have the graciousness but to unlock my castle door you will find within only two or three quiet folk who will distress you with no battles nor strange oaths. Even in the days of rival Princes and never-ending wars there dwelt still a few who took no part in the moil of life, but lived with gentle pleasures and unvoiced sorrows, somewhat as you and I; wherefore, I pray you, cross the moat. The drawbridge is down for you, and will not be raised, if, after introduction to the Chatelaine, you desire speedily to retreat._ _M. H. P._ [Illustration] _The_ CASTLE _of_ TWILIGHT [Illustration] _CHAPTER ONE_ THE DESOLATION OF AGE [Illustration] It was mid-April: a sunny afternoon. A flood of golden light, borne on gusts of sweet, chilly air, poured through the open windows of the Castle into a high-vaulted, massively furnished bedroom, hung with tapestries, and strewn with dry rushes. A heavy silence that was less a thing of the moment than a part of the general atmosphere hovered about the room; and it was not lessened by the unceasing murmur of ocean waves breaking upon the face of the cliff on which the Castle stood. This sound held in it a note of unutterable melancholy. Indeed, despite the sunlight, the sparkle of the waves, and the fragrance of the fresh spring air, this whole building, the culminating point of a long slope of landscape, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of loneliness, of sadness, of lifelessness, that found full expression in the attitude of the black-robed woman who knelt alone in the high-vaulted bedroom. Eleanore was kneeling at her priedieu. Madame Eleanore knelt at her priedieu, and did not pray. Nay, the great grief, the unvoiced bitterness in her heart, killed prayer. For, henceforth, there was one near and unbearably dear to her who must be praying for evermore. And it was this thought and the vista of her future lonely years that denied her, even as she knelt, the consolation of religion.