I
Jacqueline was sitting in the self-same deep window-embrasure from whence she had listened—oh, so long ago!—to that song, which would for ever remain for her the sweetest song on earth:
'Mignonne, allons voir si la rose——'
Only a few hours had gone by since she had reached the sublimal height of ecstatic happiness—only a few hours since she had tasted the bitter fruit of renunciation. Since then she had had a good cry, and felt better for it; but since then also she had encountered a venomous reptile on her way, and had been polluted by its touch.
Even to suggest that Jacqueline's pure faith in the man she loved had been troubled by de Landas' insidious suggestions, would be to wrong her fine and steadfast character. She did not mistrust her knight; for her he still stood far above the base calumnies hurled at him by a spiteful rival; but, somehow, de Landas' venom had succeeded in making her sorrow more acute, less endurable. Oh! if only she could have shared with her beloved all his secrets and his difficulties, if only he had thought her worthy of his entire trust!
Words which he had spoken ere he finally went away rang portentously in her ear—ominous words, which she had not heeded at the moment, for her heart was then over-full with the misery of that farewell, but which now took on, despite herself, a menacing and awesome significance.
With frowning brows and hands tightly clasped together, Jacqueline sat there, motionless, the while memory called back those words which in very truth did fill her heart with dread.
'If within the future,' Messire had said, 'aught should occur to render me odious in your sight, will you at least remember that, whatever else I may have done that was unworthy and base, my love for you has been as pure and sacred as is the love of the lark for the sun.'
He had gone after that—gone before she could ask him for an explanation of these ununderstandable words, before she could affirm her perfect faith and trust in him. Then the memory of them had faded from her ken, merged as it was in her great, all-embracing sorrow, until the wand of a devilish magician had brought them forth from out the ashes of forgetfulness, and she was left more forlorn than she had been before.