Elinor took the opposite chair. “May I tell you about it in English? I can do it more easily and better than in French.”
“Certainly, certainly. And tell me all–everything.”
Bravely the Princess listened. The tears flowed as she heard the story, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes, and even trying to smile at times in grateful sympathy for the narrator’s efforts at consolation.
“Tell me how he looked the day you found him. Did he seem to have been–ill–to have suffered?”
“We thought him asleep. There was no trace of suffering. The color of his face surprised us.”
When the story of his burial was finished, the Princess rose from her seat, came around and stood by Elinor, and took her hand. “I 193owe you so much. You were very good and considerate. I am grateful, very grateful. He was unfortunate in his life. It is a consolation to know his death was happy, and that he was reverently buried.”
Then Elinor, after hesitating, decided to ask a question.
“If it is no secret, and if you care to do it, would you mind telling me why he came across the water, out here in the forest, and lived in such a way?”
“Assuredly! And even if it were a secret I should tell you. In the first place, he was the Duc de Fontrévault, a very good name in France, as perhaps you know. He fell in love–oh, so fiercely in love!–with a lady who was to marry–well, who was betrothed to a king. It sounds like a fairy tale, n’est-ce pas?”
“It does, indeed!”