"Innocent!"
There was no answer.
He called a little louder—
"Innocent!"
Still silence. A robin hopped out from the cover of wet leaves and peered at him questioningly with its bold bright eye. Acting on an irresistible impulse he set his foot on the gnarled root of the old wistaria and started to climb to the window-sill. Three minutes sufficed him to reach it—he looked into the little room,—the room which had formerly been the study of the "Sieur Amadis de Jocelin"—and there seated at the old oak table with her head bowed down upon her hands and her hair covering her as with a veil, was Innocent. The sunlight flashed brightly in upon her—and immediately above her the golden beams traced out as with a pencil of light the arms of the old French knight with the faded rose and blue of his shield and motto illumining with curiously marked distinctness the words he himself had carved beneath his own heraldic emblems:
"Who here seekynge Forgetfulness Did here fynde Peace!"
She was very strangely still,—and a cold fear suddenly caught at
Robin's heart and half choked his breath.
"Innocent!" he cried. Then, leaping into the room like a man in sudden frenzy, he rushed towards that motionless little figure—threw his arms about it—lifted it—caressed it…
"Innocent! Look at me! Speak to me!"
The fair head fell passively back against his shoulder with all its wealth of rippling hair—the fragile form he clasped was helpless, lifeless, breathless!—and with a great shuddering sob of agony, he realised the full measure of his life's despair. Innocent was dead!—and for her, as for the "Sieur Amadis," the quaint words shining above her in the morning sunlight were aptly fitted—