“Then under your leave, may I deliver the letter to her?”
“Here, De Sucherche!” said Lord Basset, raising his voice. “Bid Emeriarde lead this gentleman to thy Lady; he hath a privy word to deliver unto her.”
Emeriarde made her appearance in the guise of a highly respectable, middle-aged upper servant, and led Godfrey up the staircase from the hall to Lady Basset’s ante-chamber, where, leaving him for a moment, while she announced a visitor to her mistress, she returned and conducted him into the presence of the Princess of Bretagne.
He saw a woman of thirty-six years of age, tall and somewhat stately, only moderately good-looking, and with an expression of intense weariness and listlessness in her dark eyes. The face was a true index to the feelings, for few lonelier women have ever shut their sorrows in their hearts than the Princess Jeanne of Bretagne. She had no child; and her husband followed the usual rule of people who spend life in amusing themselves, and who are apt to be far from amusing to their own families. His interest, his attractions, and his powers of entertainment were kept for the world outside. When his wife saw him, he was generally either vexed, and consequently irritable, or tired and somewhat sulky. All the sufferings of reaction which fell to him were visited on her. She was naturally a woman of strong but silent character; a woman who locked her feelings, her sufferings, and her thoughts in her own breast, and having found no sympathy where she ought to have found it, refrained from seeking it elsewhere.
Lord Basset would have been astonished had he been accused of ill-using his wife. He never lifted his hand against her, nor even found fault with her before company. He simply let her feel as if her life were not worth living, and there was not a soul on earth who cared to make it so. If, only now and then, he would have given her half an hour of that brilliance with which he entertained his guests! if he would occasionally have shown her that he cared whether she was tired, that it made any difference to his happiness whether she was happy! She was a woman with intense capacity for loving, but there was no fuel for the fire, and it was dying out for sheer want of material. Women of lighter character might have directed their affections elsewhere; women of more versatile temperament might have found other interests for themselves; she did neither. Though strong, her intellect was neither quick nor of great range; it was deep rather than wide in its extent. It must be remembered, also, that a multitude of interests which are open to a woman in the present day, were quite unknown to her. The whole world of literature and science was an unknown thing; and art was only accessible in the two forms of fancy work and illumination, for neither of which had she capacity or taste. She could sew, cook, and act as a doctor when required, which was not often; and there the list of her accomplishments ended. There was more in her, but nobody cared to draw it out, and herself least of all.
Lady Basset bowed gravely in reply to Godfrey’s courtesy, broke the seal of the letter, and gazed upon the cabalistic characters therein written. Had they been Chinese, she would have learned as much from them as she did. She handed back the letter with a request that he would read it to her, if he possessed the art of reading; if not, she would send for Father Collard.
For a moment, but no more, the temptation visited Godfrey to read the letter as something which it was not. He dismissed it, not from any conscientious motive, but simply from the doubt whether he could keep up the delusion.
“Good!” said Lady Basset, when the letter had been read to her; “and now what is that you are to tell me?”
“Dame, suffer me first to say that it is of the gravest moment that there be no eavesdroppers about, and that your Ladyship be pleased to keep strait silence thereupon. Otherwise, I dare not utter that wherewith his Grace’s letter hath ado.”
“There be no ears at hand save my bower-woman’s, and I will answer for her as for myself. I can keep silence when need is. Speak on.”