She was no longer the gay, bright girl that he had known in Istria, on whose rosy cheek the touch of care had withered not a flower, whose step was buoyancy, whose eyes looked youth, and whose arching lip breathed the very spirit of gladness. She was no longer the same fair girl we have seen, dreaming with her beloved husband overjoys and hopes that royal stations must not know--with the substantial happiness of the present, and the fanciful delights of the future, forming a beamy wreath of smiles around her brow.--No; she was still fair and lovely, but with a sadder kind of loveliness. The same sweet features remained,--the same bland soul, shining from within--the same heavenly eyes--the same enchanting lip; but those eyes had an expression of pensive languor, far different from former days; and that lip, though it beamed with a sweet welcoming smile, as her father's and her brother's friend approached, seemed as if chained down by some power of melancholy, so that the smile itself was sad. The rose too had left her cheek; and though a very, very lovely colour of a different hue had supplied its place, still it was not the colour of the rose. It was something more delicate, more tender, more akin to the last blush of the sinking sun before he stoops into the darkness.
Two of the queen's ladies were at some distance behind, and, with good discretion, after the count d'Auvergne had joined their royal mistress, they made that distance greater. D'Auvergne advanced, and, as was the custom of the day, bent his lips to the queen's hand. The one he raised it in, trembled as if it were palsied; but there was feverish heat in that of Agnes, as he pressed his lip upon it, still more fearful.
"Welcome to the court, beau sire D'Auvergne!" said the queen with a sweet and unembarrassed smile. "You have heard that my truant husband, Philip, has not yet returned, though he promised me, with all a lover's vows, to be back by yester-even. They tell me, you men are all false with us women, and, in good truth, I begin to think it."
"May you never find it too bitterly, madam," replied the count.
"Nay, you spoke that in sad earnest, my lord," said Agnes, now striving with effort for the same playful gaiety that was once natural to her. "You are no longer what you were in Istria, beau sire. But we must make you merrier before you leave our court. Come, you know, before the absolution, must still go confession;" and as she spoke, with a certain sort of restlessness that had lately seized her, she led the way round the garden, adding, "Confess, beau sire, what makes you sad--every one must have something to make them sad--so I will be your confessor. Confess, and you shall have remission."
She touched the count's wound to the quick, and he replied in a tone of sadness bordering on reproach: "Oh! madam! I fear me, confession would come too late!"
How a single word--a single tone--a single look, will sometimes give the key to a mystery. There are moments when conception, awakened we know not how, flashes like the lightning through all space, illumining at once a world that was before all darkness. That single sentence, with the tone in which it was said, touched the "electric chain" of memory, and ran brightening along over a thousand links in the past, which connected those words with the days long gone by. It all flashed upon Agnes's mind at once. She had been loved--deeply, powerfully loved; and, unknowing then what love was, she had not seen it. But now, that love was the constant food of her mind, from morning until night, her eyes were opened at once, and that, with no small pain to herself. The change in her manner, however, was instant; and she felt, that one light word, one gay jest, after that discovery, would render her culpable, both to her husband and to Thibalt d'Auvergne. Her eye lost the light it had for a moment assumed--the smile died away upon her lip, and she became calm and cold as some fair statue.
The Count d'Auvergne saw the change, and felt perhaps why; but as he did feel it, firm in the noble rectitude of his intentions, he lost the embarrassment of his manner, and took up the conversation which the queen had dropped entirely.
"To quit a most painful subject, madam," he said calmly and firmly, "allow me to say that I should never have returned to Europe, had not duties called me; those duties are over, and I shall soon go back to wear out the frail rest of life amidst the soldiers of the cross. I may fall before some Saracen lance,--I may taste the cup of the mortal plague; but my bones shall whiten on a distant shore, after fighting under the sign of our salvation. There still, however, remains one task to be performed, which, however wringing to my heart, must be completed. As I returned to France, madam, I know not what desire of giving myself pain made me visit Istria; I there saw your noble father, who bound me by a knightly vow to bear a message to his child."
"Indeed, sir!" said Agnes: "let me beg you would deliver it.--But first tell me, how is my father?" she aided anxiously,--"how looks he? Have age, and the wearing cares of this world, made any inroad on his vigorous strength? Speak, sir count!"