“Ah, yes! It is Laure’s departure. Yet that must not be too much mourned. Laure’s wild ways had come to be a source of uneasiness to both of us at times. ’Tis true that there is lost an alliance that might have brought much honor to Le Crépuscule. By the favor of my Lord Duke, Laure might have wed with Grantmesnil, Senlis, Angers itself, perhaps; and there was ever Laval.—Yet—” He paused musingly, not seeing the look that had come back into the face of madame. Only when she stopped again and turned to him did he utter a soft exclamation, half surprise and half helpless apology. But Eleanore, smiling at him sadly, began, in that voice that had long been tuned to the stillness of the Castle: “If I could but make thee understand, Gerault! If I could make thee look upon my hours of loneliness here—and see—Gerault, it is not a matter of alliance, or of honor, or of dishonor, with Laure. It is that she was my child, my daughter, my companion—how adored!—here, in this—this great Castle of Twilight. Neither thou nor any man can know what our lives are.—But think, Gerault—think of me and of the Castle after thou art gone. What is there for me here? The tasks that I invent to fill the hours are useless to deaden thought. They are not changed from the occupations of thirty years ago. Nor, methinks, have women known aught else than spinning, weaving, sewing, spinning again, since the days of the earliest kings,—the Kings of Jerusalem.—And day after day through the long years I dwell here in this barren spot—dependent on others for what happiness I am to get in my life. And now—now the Church, in which always my hope of another, better life hath lain, taketh my child from me. Let then the Church give me something in place of her! Let the Church pay back something of its debt. And thou also, my son,—give me some help to live through the unending days of thy absence in Rennes.” “I, madame!—the Church!—What art thou saying?” “Hast thou not heard me?” “I have heard. But what shall I do, my mother?” “Listen, Gerault. The Church hath taken a daughter from me. Thou, by the aid of the Church, canst give me another. Gerault, thou must marry. Marry, my son. Bring thy wife home to me!” Gerault sprang to his feet with an expression on his face that his mother had never before called there. For a moment he looked at her, his eyes saying what his lips would not. Then, gradually, the fire in his face died down, and he reseated himself slowly on the settle, while the bird on his wrist, a wild _hagard_, fluttered its wings, and dug its talons painfully into the knight’s flesh. “Marry!” said Gerault, at length, in a voice that sounded strange to his own ears. “Marry! Hast thou forgotten?”