Eleanore rose from her knees a little hastily. “Nay, Gerault, I was not at prayer. ’Tis an old custom of mine to meditate in that place. Enter thou and sit with me for a little.”
Gerault bowed silently and accepted her invitation by seating himself near one of the windows on a wooden settle. His silence seemed to demand speech from his mother. But Eleanore, once on her feet, had begun slowly to pace the floor of her room, at the same time losing herself again in her own thoughts.
Without speaking and without any discomfort at the continued silence, Gerault watched his mother—contemplated her, rather—as she walked. Often he had felt a pride—a pride that suggested patronage—in that walk of madame’s. Never, in any woman, had he seen such a carriage, such conscious poise, such dignity, such command. In his heart her son, somewhat given to irreverent observation and analysis of those about him, had named her the “Quiet-Browed,” and the very fact that he could have seen somewhat below the surface and yet named her thus, was evidence enough of her powers of self-control. It was he who finally broke the silence between them.
“Well, madame, the change in our house hath taken place. Laure’s new life is safely begun; and she hath given what she could to the honor of our race. Now that it is done, I return to Rennes, to the side of my Lord Duke.”
Eleanore made no pause in her walk, nor did she betray by the slightest gesture her feeling at the announcement. Too many times before had she experienced this same sensation. After a few seconds she asked quietly: “When do you go?”
In spite of her self-control, her voice had been a strain off the key, and now Gerault looked at her keenly, asking: “There is a reason why I should not ride to Rennes? I have not thy permission to go?”
Eleanore paused in her walk to turn and look at him. There was just a suggestion of scorn in her attitude. “Reason! Permission! Was ever a reason why a Crépuscule might not fare forth to Rennes, or one that asked permission of a woman ere he went?”
Again Gerault looked at her, this time in that dignified disapproval that man uses to cover an unlooked-for mortification. And the Seigneur was decidedly lofty as he said: “I have given thee pain, madame, though of how, or wherefore, I am wofully ignorant.”
“Pain, Gerault? Pain?” Eleanore repressed herself again and immediately resumed her walk. In a few seconds the calm, quiet dignity returned, her mask was replaced, every vestige of her feeling hidden, and she had become once more the châtelaine of unvoiced loneliness. Then she went on speaking: “Pain, Gerault? Surely not. Know I not enough of Rennes that I should not be well content to have thee in that lordly place, with thy rightful companions, men of thy blood? Shall I not send thee gayly forth again to that trysting-place of knightly arms?”
“And yet, madame, I did but now surprise in thy face a look of sorrow, of some unhappiness, that is new to it.”