The other hesitated for a moment. She had learned from Alixe, on the previous evening, the history of the strange home-coming, and all that any one knew of what had gone before it; and she realized that any question that Laure might ask must be fully answered. Yet it cost her a strong mental effort before she could say: “I was the wife of thy brother.”
“Ah! Gerault! Where is he?” Laure paused for an instant. “Thou—wast—his wife, thou sayest?”
Lenore gazed at her sadly, wondering if the wanderer must so soon be confronted with new sorrow. Laure sat there, bewildered, but questioning with her eyes, a suggestion of fear beginning to show in her face. Lenore realized how madame must shrink from telling the story of Gerault’s death; so, presently, lifting her eyes to Laure’s again, she said in a low voice,—
“Gerault’s wife was I, because—since September, thy brother—sleeps—in the chapel—by his father.”
Laure listened with wide eyes to these words; and, having heard, she neither moved nor spoke. A few tears gathered slowly, and fell down her face to her woollen robe, and then she bowed her head till it rested on the hands clasped on her knee. Lenore stood where she was, looking on, knowing not whether to go or stay; realizing instinctively that there are natures that desire to find their own comfort.
While Lenore was still debating the point, Madame Eleanore and Alixe came together into the room; and as soon as madame beheld Lenore, she knew that her daughter had learned all that she was to know of sorrow: that what she herself most dreaded, had mercifully come to pass. And going to the bed, she took Laure into her arms.
Their embrace was as close as the first of yesterday had been. Laure clung to her mother, getting comfort from the mere contact; and, in her child’s grief for the dead, Eleanore felt the touch of that sympathy for which she had hungered in silence through the first shock of her loss. For Laure was of her own blood and of Gerault’s; had known the Seigneur as brother, companion, and equal, and had looked up to him even as he had looked up to his mother. Thus, bitterly poignant as were these moments of fresh grief, there was in them also a great consolation,—the consolation of companionship. And when finally madame raised her head, there was written in her face what none had seen there since the time of Laure’s departure for her novitiate at La Madeleine. Then she reminded Laure of Alixe’s presence, and Laure, looking up, smiled through her tears, and held out both hands.
“Alixe! Alixe! my sister! Art thou glad I am come home?”
“So glad, Laure! There have been many hours empty for want of thee since thy going. And art thou—” she hesitated a little—“art thou to stay with us now?”
Accidentally, inadvertently, had come the question that had lain hidden both in Laure’s heart and in her mother’s since almost the first moment of the return. Laure herself dared not answer Alixe; but she looked fearfully at her mother, her eyes filled with mute pleading. And Eleanore, seeing the look, made a sudden decision in her heart,—