At that time there prevailed, together with a sultry kind of viciousness, compared with which modern profligacy appears petty and childish, a frank, genial naïveté, which is lost to our age with its prudish, artificial morality. The most delicate maiden did not hesitate, at that time, to lend help in nursing a sick man; and besides, women in that century--thanks to the rarity of doctors--found it necessary to acquire some knowledge of the healing art.
Hence it was that Blanche came to the assistance of Dame Isabella and her Uncle Gottfried in the care of De Lancy, and as her hand was the most delicate, it usually fell to her to loosen the bandages around the ugly wound on his head, and as she had the steadiest nerve, it was she who, with Gottfried's help, removed the splinter of a broken sword-point from his shoulder.
Quiet and helpful as an angel, she hovered about the unconscious man. But once, as she was bending over his couch to watch the breathing of the sufferer, a great abatement of the wound fever happily set in. De Lancy opened his eyes, which, though at times blue as the heavens above, were at others black as an abyss. The "petite bande" knew these eyes well.
Just now they were very blue and fixed with peculiar pleasure on the tender little maiden. But she drew back embarrassed. The strange, marvellous eyes had driven away his guardian angel, and from that hour she avoided the sick man's room.
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We shall readily imagine that Henri de Lancy would not endure to be nursed like a sick woman, and, as soon as he could lift hand and foot, he dragged himself off his couch--possibly his impatience to see the pretty girl again had also something to do with this haste.
It provoked the young dandy that he could not introduce himself into the presence of the ladies in a more elegant costume; yet his comparatively simple travelling dress was becoming to him, and still more (at least in the eyes of the sweet Blanche) his paleness, his deep-sunk, feverish eyes, and the weakness in all his movements, which he strove to hide; for there is something which appeals to the sympathies of a true woman in seeing a strong, chivalrous man impatient and mortified at his weakness. Under her dropped eyelids Blanche watched all his movements, and was constantly considering how to remove what might interfere with the comfort of the helpless invalid. Yet she did not offer him the slightest service herself, only secretly made Dame Isabella acquainted with the need. Her sympathy and her charming bashfulness did not fail to touch the heart of the convalescent.
The "petite bande" would have laughed in scorn and right heartily, had they seen how modestly the audacious De Lancy exerted himself to please the unpretending little girl with the pale face of a novice.
And Lady Isabella neglected the page Philemon and adorned herself to such a degree that--well--it cost De Lancy all the trouble in the world not to laugh in her face. The finest part of her toilet was her "coiffure," which in style dated back at least thirty years. It consisted of a towering head-dress that ran up to a point, from which an enormous veil fluttered down to her knees.
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