“Zana,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “if these people wrong you, if in all things they do not regard Aurora’s child as a queen, send the ruby ear-rings to Chaleco. During a few months he will be with his people, and even after he is gone the man or woman who offends you shall feel their vengeance.”
“Oh, there will be no need,” I answered, regarding my husband with a heart swell; “but for yourself, Chaleco, my more than friend, for your people—yours and mine, count—remember that a portion of all the wealth you have won for us must each year go to them.”
The gipsy count grasped my hand hard, his eyes sparkled, he uttered a wild blessing in Rommany, and left the church before we could urge him to join us at Greenhurst.
Amid the mellow chime of bells that filled the air with rejoicings—along a path littered with flowers, rained over it by the village children—with the morning lighting up the earth into a paradise, I entered Greenhurst, its mistress, yet scarcely wishing to be that. It was enough and too much happiness for me that I was the wife of its master.
Three months after my wedding-day, I was taken with a sudden desire to visit Marston Court. None of my old habits had been laid aside. I still gloried in a gallop over the uplands on Jupiter who grew young as he undertook these wild rides. My husband was absent, and Lady Catherine now lived entirely at Paris. It was not often that my old restless habits came on, but this day I was haunted with a feeling that some one wanted me at Marston Court. I had been thinking of Chaleco all day, with a degree of anxiety which no reasoning could explain or dispel. These haunting thoughts grew so powerful at last, that I ordered Jupiter to be saddled. Just as I was mounting him, a bit of paper was placed in my hand by a boy. It contained a single sentence:
“Zana, Aurora’s child, come to me.
“Chaleco.”
This message was a relief. It gave a reason for the depressing thoughts that had driven me forth. I put my horse to his speed, never pausing to ask what direction we should take. By this time Marston Court was no longer a picturesque wilderness; the gardens were almost in order; the noble trees were free from undergrowth; the house itself princely. Leaving my horse in the grounds, I walked across the garden to the summer-house, through which the gipsy chief had conducted me from the tower chamber. The mosaic star remained, with its secret undiscovered, in the pavement. I remembered its mechanism, and with a little force wheeled it from the opening it concealed. The passage was dark, but a little time brought me to a door which opened into the tower.
The chamber was desolate and empty. Ashes lay on the hearth as when we left it that night. The same drapery of cobwebs fell in dusty festoons over the narrow windows, rendering the room at first so dim that I could see no object distinctly. But in an instant I caught the light of two large eyes glaring at me from a corner; then a pale face, distorted with pain, with the dusky outlines of a human form, reposing on what had once been a magnificent couch. The glow of an old velvet cushion, which still retained gleams of original crimson, was insufficient to give a tinge of color to that pallid face, which seemed the more deathly from contrast with the beard of iron-grey which fell from it, like moss from a blasted tree.
“Zana! Zana!” said a sharp voice from the couch.