"Have you heard the tidings?" he cried in a quavering voice, on beholding Tristan.
"What tidings?" Tristan returned, struck by the horror in the friar's face.
"The Lady Hellayne is dead!" he said with a sob.
Tristan stared at him as if a thunderbolt had cleft the ground beside him. For a moment he seemed bereft of understanding.
"Dead?" he gasped with a choking sensation. "What is it you say?"
"Well may you doubt your ears," the friar sobbed. "But Mater Sanctissima, it is the truth! Madonna Hellayne is dead. They found her dead—early this morning—in the vineyard of the Lord Basil."
"In the vineyard of the Lord Basil?" came back the echo from Tristan's lips.
"There was a feast, lasting well into the night. The Lady Hellayne took suddenly ill. They fetched a mediciner. When he arrived it was all over."
"God of Heaven! Where is she now?"
"They conveyed her to the palace of the Lord Laval, to prepare her for interment."