“Thou hast brought home from Rennes a wife: a fair maid and a gentle as any that hath ever lived; and moreover one that loves thee but too well. In her little time of dwelling here she hath, by her quiet, lovely ways, crept close into my heart, that was erstwhile so bitterly empty. And having her here, and seeing her growing devotion to thee, her continual striving to please thee in thine every desire, methought that thou, a knight sworn to chivalry, must needs treat her with more than tenderness. Yet that hast thou not, Gerault. Dieu! Thou’rt all but cruel with her! God knows thy father came to be not over-thoughtful in his love of me. Yet had he neglected and spurned me in our early marriage as thou hast this bride of thine, I had surely made end of myself or ever thou camest into the world. Shame it is to thee and to all mankind how—” “Madame! Madame!—Forbear!” At his tone, Eleanore held her peace, while Gerault, after a deep pause, in which he regained his self-control, began,— “Canst thou remember, my mother, a talk that we—thou and I together in this room—held one afternoon more than a year agone? ’Twas in this room, the day before I went last to Rennes. Thou didst entreat me to bring thee back a wife to be thy daughter in the place of Laure. “At that hour the idea was impossible to me. Thou knowest—’fore God thou knowest—the suffering that time has never eased for me. A thousand times I had vowed then, a hundred times I swore thereafter, that the image of mine own Lenore should never be replaced within my heart; and it holds there to-day as fair and clear as if it were but yesterday she went. “Many months passed away, madame, and I saw this golden-haired maiden about Rennes,—in the Ladies’ Gallery in the lists, and at feasts in the Castle; yet I had never a thought in my heart of wedding with her. Then—late in the spring—St. Nazaire sent me message of Laure’s disgrace, her excommunication; and my heart bled for thee. I sent out many men to search my sister, but not one ever gathered trace of her. Then, when there was no further hope of restoring her to thee, the idea of marriage came to me for the first time as a duty—toward thee. My whole soul cried out against it. Lenore de Laval reproached me from the heaven where she dwells. And yet—in the end—for _thy_ sake, madame, I brought home with me the gentle child men call my wife.