For a few moments she made no reply. The casement stood open, although it was winter, and through the stillness of the frosty air echoed once more the solemn, "Dieu le veut."
"Out of the mouth of the babes who are Thine, out of the mouth of Thy poor, O Christ, Thou speakest. I listen—I obey. God wills it.—My boy," she said quietly, pressing him to her heart, "God has surely spoken by thee. My heart speaks by thee. We will go."
She sat beside the child till he slept, till the long lashes shaded the flushed cheek, and the half-open lips and the small clenched hand seemed to tell of some boyish dream of conflict with the infidel.
Kneeling beside her sleeping child, she made her first vow in the presence of all that made life living to her.
And then she went down to keep solitary vigil in the castle-chapel; to kindle those sepulchral lamps which were seen far across the valley, which she never suffered any hands but her own to trim or feed.
Her own room was bare and austere as any monastic cell. All her precious things were lavished on the mortuary chapel, which was her treasure-chamber, the resting-place she longed to share, the threshold of the Father's house. On the steps of that memorial altar, which was a tomb, and there only in the world, she felt at home.
The light of the flickering lamps, contending with the steadfast, silent moonbeams, wrought strange magical contrasts of glow and gloom on silver shrine, and polished marble pavement, and jewelled paten, and chalice, and gold-embroidered drapery; and beyond, on the rich Gothic sculpture, here and there relieving the shadows of the arched aisle.
And kneeling there once more, she renewed the vow, in the presence of what made life death to her, and death as the threshold of life.
"Dieu le veut," she said, pressing her forehead on the cold marble. "O Christ, I take the cross on me, for me and for him. Accept it for both, and shelter us both with Thine."