The Lady of Joyous Vale leant against the stone sill with her face resting betwixt her hands. There was but little light in her shadowy eyes, and her shoulders drooped from the fair sweep of her neck, as though she were weary, and had known no sleep. She stood there motionless, like one whose thoughts sped far away over the dim horizon into the distant land of dreams.
The girl Miriam watched her lady, crooning to herself some ancient song with a faint smile on her full red lips. She was not unhappy, this Hebrew child, though she wondered, as she sat there, what had passed betwixt the woman who brooded by the window and Tristan who had gone to the mountainous south. That Rosamunde was sorrowful she knew full well, since her sorrow spoke on her wistful face.
From below came the sound of a man singing the staunch lines of some old song forged in the smithies of the north. The girl Miriam smiled, and pressed one hand over the charm that hung over her heart. Rosamunde seemed to droop the more as she bowed down her head towards the night.
Miriam rose from her stool, went to Rosamunde, and touched her shoulder.
“What ails you?” she said. “May I not help?”
“It is nothing, child,” came the dull response.
“Are you ill, lady, in body or in heart?”
“Why question me, girl, when I have no answer?”
Both Miriam’s hands were on Rosamunde’s arm, and her eyes were very gentle under her dusky hair.
“Am I but a child, then?” she asked.