On the following morning, in the presence of an imposing company, the Lord Bishop officiating, the little girl was baptized. Laure and Courtoise were the godparents; Laure feeling that, in being trusted with this holy office, she stood once more honorably in the eyes of the world. According to her mother’s wish, the babe was christened Lenore, and Alixe guessed wrong when she thought the little one called after another of that name. When the ceremony was over, and the baptismal feast lay ready spread, madame took the child into her arms to carry it back to the mother; and St. Nazaire, seeing the kiss that she pressed upon the tiny cheek, realized that the cause was won.
Madame Eleanore’s lead was quickly followed by every one in the Castle; and the disappointment at the baby’s sex wore away so rapidly that in a month probably no one would have admitted that there had ever been any chagrin at all. Perhaps no royal heir had ever known more abject homage than was paid to that wee, bright-eyed, grave-faced, helpless creature, who was perfectly contented only when she lay in her mother’s arms.
Lenore regained her strength slowly. Her long winter of idleness and grieving had ill-fitted her to bear the strain of what she had endured; and it was many weeks before she tried to leave her room. Thus, bit by bit, the whole life of the Castle came to gravitate around her chamber. It was like a court of which the young mother was queen, and where at certain hours of the day, all the women-folk of Crépuscule were wont to congregate. It was on an afternoon in the middle of May, when summer first hovered over the land, that Lenore was dressed for the first time. She sat in a semi-reclining position by the window, whence she could look off upon the sea, the baby at her side, and Alixe the only other person in the room. For nearly an hour Lenore had been silent, one hand gently caressing the baby’s little cheek, her big eyes wandering along the far horizon line. Alixe was bent over a parchment manuscript, which Anselm had taught her how to read, and she scarcely raised her eyes from it to look at anything in the room. Her passage had become complicated, and, at the same time, interesting, when Lenore’s voice suddenly broke in upon her,—