She raised her goblet, a beautiful chased cup of gold, in acknowledgment. But she did not see the ill-omened smile that flitted over the thin lips of Basil, and she wished for Tristan as she had never wished for him before. After a time the guests quitted the banquet hall for the moonlit garden, and Basil's attentions became more and more insistent. It was in vain Hellayne's eyes strained for her lord. He was not to be found.-- It was on the following morning when the horrible news aroused the Romans that the young wife of the strange lord from Provence had, during the night, suddenly died at the banquet of the Grand Chamberlain. From a friar whom he chanced to pass on his way to the Lateran Tristan received the first news. Fra Geronimo's face was white as death, and his limbs shook as with a palsy. He had been the confessor of the Lady Hellayne, the only visitor allowed to come near her. "Have you heard the tidings?" he cried in a quavering voice, on beholding Tristan. "What tidings?" Tristan returned, struck by the horror in the friar's face. "The Lady Hellayne is dead!" he said with a sob. Tristan stared at him as if a thunderbolt had cleft the ground beside him. For a moment he seemed bereft of understanding. "Dead?" he gasped with a choking sensation. "What is it you say?" "Well may you doubt your ears," the friar sobbed. "But Mater Sanctissima, it is the truth! Madonna Hellayne is dead. They found her dead--early this morning--in the vineyard of the Lord Basil." "In the vineyard of the Lord Basil?" came back the echo from Tristan's lips. "There was a feast, lasting well into the night. The Lady Hellayne took suddenly ill. They fetched a mediciner. When he arrived it was all over." "God of Heaven! Where is she now?" "They conveyed her to the palace of the Lord Laval, to prepare her for interment." Without a word Tristan started to break away from the friar, his head in a whirl, his senses benumbed. The latter caught him betime. "What would you do?" Tristan stared at him as one suddenly gone mad. "I will see her." "It is impossible!" the friar replied. "You cannot see her." From Tristan's eyes came a glare that would have daunted many a one of greater physical prowess than his informant. "Cannot? Who is to prevent me?" "The man whom fate gave her for mate," replied the friar. "That dog--" "A brawl in the presence of death? Would you thus dishonor her memory? Would she wish it so?" For a moment Tristan stared at the man before him as if he heard some message from afar, the meaning of which he but faintly guessed. Then a blinding rush of tears came to his eyes. He shook with the agony of his grief regardless of those who passed and paused and wondered, while the friar's words of comfort and solace fell on unmindful ears. At last, heedless of his companion, heedless of his surroundings, heedless of everything, he rushed away to seek solitude, where he would not see a human face, not hear a human voice.