Rosamunde, turning suddenly from the sunlit lawn before him, passed down a terrace-way built above an offshoot of the stream, where oleanders grew in great stone jars. Water plashed beneath on ferns and moss-green stones. Tristan, while her back was turned, swung along a bough and straddled the wall. It was smooth on the inner face, giving no foothold, no vantage to the fingers. Tristan jumped for it, landed in a bed of pinks, rolled over, and scrambled up with earthy hands. The soft loam and the plants had deadened his fall. He crossed a stretch of grass, rounded a clump of bays, found Rosamunde leaning on the balustrade of a little bridge.
“Tristan!”
The name was mouthed in a half-credulous whisper, as she turned on him, sudden colour surging to her cheeks. She grew pale again, yet her eyes were full of a strange brightness, her face turned slightly heavenwards, with the red lips parted above the strong white chin.
“Tristan!”
The man was redder than Rosamunde. Her beauty silenced him, and he could gaze, nothing more.
“Tristan, I thought you dead.”
“Dead, God be thanked, no,” he said, going on his knees as one who remembered tales of courtesy. “Ah, Madame Rosamunde, I have kept my faith. I have searched and found you. Behold, I bring liberty.”
She stood back as the man did her homage stiffly, yet with a rugged dignity that showed his temper. There was vast earnestness upon Rosamunde’s face. The baser passions of the world had hemmed her in these many months, and dread of their animal strength had made her eye all men askance. Even Tristan was not trusted yet. A woman jealous of her womanhood, she conned his face as though to read his humour.
“Tristan, I thought you dead.”
It was as though she parleyed with him that she might judge him the more.