"Whither does he wander now?" said Christabel, softly repeating lines learnt long ago.
"Haply in his dreams the wind
Wafts him here and lets him find
The lovely orphan child again,
In her castle by the coast;
The youngest fairest chatelaine,
That this realm of France can boast,
Our snowdrop by the Atlantic sea,
Iseult of Brittany,"
"Poor Iseult of the White Hand," said a voice at Christabel's shoulder, "after all was not her lot the saddest—had not she the best claim to our pity?"
Christabel started, turned, and she and Angus Hamleigh looked in each other's faces in the clear bright light. It was over four years since they had parted, tenderly, fondly, as plighted husband and wife, locked in each other's arms, promising each other speedy reunion, ineffably happy in their assurance of a future to be spent together: and now they met with pale cheeks, and lips dressed in a society smile—eyes—to which tears would have been a glad relief—assuming a careless astonishment.
"You here, Mr. Hamleigh!" cried Jessie, seeing Christabel's lips quiver dumbly, as if in the vain attempt at words, and rushing to the rescue. "We were told you were in Russia."
"I have been in Russia. I spent last winter at Petersburg—the only place where caviare and Adelina Patti are to be enjoyed in perfection—and I spent a good deal of this summer that is just gone in the Caucasus."
"How nice!" exclaimed Jessie, as if he had been talking of Buxton or Malvern. "And did you really enjoy it?"
"Immensely. All I ever saw in Switzerland is as nothing compared with the gloomy grandeur of that mighty semicircle of mountain peaks, of which Elburz, the shining mountain, the throne of Ormuzd, occupies the centre."
"And how do you happen to be here—on this insignificant mound?" asked Jessie.
"Tintagel's surge-beat hill can never seem insignificant to me. National poetry has peopled it—while the Caucasus is only a desert."