Spur struck flank. At the same instant, the two horses darted forward to the drawbridge, across which they had presently clattered. Alixe, who had been a silent spectator of the scene of departure, was standing near Lenore; and now she leaned over and would have whispered in the young wife’s ear; but Lenore could not have heard her had she spoken. The child stood like a statue, blind to everything save to the blaze of passing armor, deaf to all but the echo of flying hoofs. Here she stood, in the centre of the courtyard, alone with her strange little life, watching the swift-running steed carry from her all her power of joy. With straining eyes she saw the two figures disappear down the long, winding hill; and when they had gone, and only a lazily rising dust-cloud remained to mark their path, she stayed there still. But presently Eleanore came to her side and took her cold hand in a hot pressure. And then, as the two bereft women looked into each other’s eyes, the frozen grief melted at last, and the flood burst upon them in all its overwhelming fury.
For ten days after Gerault’s departure, Lenore led a disastrous mental existence, which she expressed neither by words nor by deeds. In that time no one in the Castle knew how she was rent and torn with anguish, with yearning that had never been satisfied, and with useless regret for a bygone happiness that had not been happy. The silent progress of her grief led her into dark valleys of despair; yet none dreamed in what depths she wandered. She, the woman chaste and pure, dared not try to comprehend all that went on within her. She dared not picture to herself what it was she really longed for so bitterly. The cataclysms that rent her mind in twain were unholy things, and, had she been normal, she might have refused to acknowledge them. The changes in her life had come upon her with such overwhelming swiftness that she had hitherto had no time for analysis; and now that she found herself with a long leisure in which to think, the chaos of her mind seemed hopeless; she despaired of coming again into understanding with herself.
During all these days Madame Eleanore watched her closely, but to little purpose. The calm outward demeanor of the young woman baffled every suspicion of her inward state. Day after day Lenore sat at work in the whirring, noisy spinning-room, toiling upon her tapestry with a diligence and a persistent silence that defied encroachment. Hour after hour her eyes would rest upon the dim, blue sea; for that sea was the only thing that seemed to possess the power of stilling her inward rebellion. Forgetting how the winds could sometimes drive its sparkling surface into a furious stretch of tumbling waters, she dreamed of making her own spirit as placid and as quiet as the ocean. The thought was inarticulate; but it grew, even in the midst of her inward tumult, till in the end it brought her something of the quiet she so sorely needed.