With a face of formal duty, the maid rose from her knees, and, very stiff and punctilious, completed her young mistress’s night toilette. Not another word did she speak; until presently the parting benediction, which she uttered in a voice so cold that it might have been mistaken for an anathema.
And Isabella? Once alone, she crept and found her basil-pot, and sighed her love’s orisons among its muffling leaves, where still the envious flowers delayed to show, and eased her sore heart in silent tears.
Gone to the wars? And without one word or sign to her? Perhaps to be slain, and so to leave her for evermore bereaved and desolate. O, was it true—was it? Did he want to die, perhaps, because his hope was already killed? She had killed it; it was her silence that had driven him to despair. The anguish of that thought was exquisite. He had trusted to her, and she had failed him. O, for some poison in these gentle leaves, to breathe and sleep and die upon her love! She never once doubted his fidelity—not once. All those cruel calumnies had left her unshaken. Her pure heart was incapable of such treachery. They might as well forbear to hurt a faith that was immortal.
In the midst of her agony a thought stole upon her like balm. A report!—it was nothing more than that. Was it possible that he himself had given it currency, in order to throw dust in their eyes—that, under cover of it, he had returned to Parma, and was somewhere in hiding, waiting till he could communicate with her? There was life, passionate, exulting, in that reaction to hope. How could she ever have believed he would abandon her so, after what had passed between them—her lord, her noble heart? She was a poor trustless thing, unworthy of his choice.
Steadfastly she strove to keep that dear belief before her eyes; and, little as it was, it was enough to steel her to endure the long long days of waiting. For still they passed and passed without a sign, drawing her hour by hour nearer to the fate she so unspeakably dreaded. She did not ask herself by what miracle she was to escape her doom. She felt only that to see him again, to rest upon his heart, were to solve all difficulties.
And so the year sped on. To Fanchette she betrayed no more of herself; only her basil was her only friend; and she would speak softly to it, and with pretty wooings ask it to blossom soon—very soon now, lest its tardiness should prove their undoing. It was odd and pitiful how she had come to regard this plant as the sure symbol of their destiny.
About the court, those who knew, and watched her privately, believed her to be truly reconciled. She was very quiet and gracious with all; they took her sweet seriousness for first flower of the solemn election to which she was called, as one fits oneself with gravity for the sacrament. And yet she was guileful—a most wilful and passionate rebel under her seeming repose, since Love had first taught her his outlawry. Only she had learned discretion of necessity; she could play a part with her spies, and lead them on to false conclusions. Because for her love’s dear using alone she preserved the perfect treasure of her truth and loyalty. What did anything else matter?
Once or twice during this time she received a letter from her royal betrothed—documents of the heart inevitably a little pompous, but kind and manly. There was no least allusion in them, of course, to a dismissed episode, no condescending to a reference to so inconsiderable a spark in the orbit of the imperial system as a certain M. Tiretta. Had there been, Isabella might have cast them aside, the formal pretence of reading once achieved, with less impatience than she did. And yet, in honest truth, they were more than she deserved.
And still the year, like a celestial lamplighter, ran down its golden ladder from the topmost heavens; and as the sun dropped daily from its high estate, and the earth grew slowly chill, so into the girl’s heart stole ever more and more the killing frost of hope deferred. All her first despair crept back, and now with renewed terror that it must indeed be as Fanchette had hinted, and that he was gone to fight—perhaps was even now lying stark and dead upon some battlefield, or weeks-long buried under the bloody sods. For all her frantic longings and strained listening, no reference to him in her father’s court had ever again, since that shameful day, reached her ears; and there were already wedding rumours in the air.
Then, in the loneliness of her room, she fell upon her knees and called miserably upon death, if he had taken her love, to take her too—to save her from the unspeakable anguish of the fate with which she was now nearly threatened.