"And she never came back?" I said pityingly.
"Is it much wonder?" answered Lady Sybil, in a low voice, rocking the child gently in her arms. "It would have been much, I think, for the crowned and anointed Queen of Jerusalem to steal into her capital as Damoiselle de Courtenay. But it would have been far more for the wife and mother to come suing to her supplanter for a sight of her own children. No, I cannot wonder that she never, never came back."
I was silent for a little while, then I said--
"Was the Lord King as grieved as she? I cannot understand, if so, why they should not have obtained a dispensation, and have been married over again."
Lady Sybil shook her head, and I saw another tear drop on the baby's robe.
"No, Helena," she said, hardly above a whisper: "I do not think he was. He had the opportunity of allying himself with the Cæsars. And there are men to whom a woman is a woman, and one woman is just as good as another, or very nearly so. Do men selling a horse stop to consider whether it will be as happy with the new master as the old? They do not care. And, very often, they cannot understand."
"And you think--if she be alive--that she will never come?" I asked.
"I hope she might. But I think she will not. Ah, how I have hoped it! Helena, hast thou wondered how it is that nothing short of absolute impossibility will suffer me to depute to another the daily distribution of the dole at the postern gate to those poor women that come for alms? Canst thou not guess that amongst all the faces I look but for one--for the one that might creep in there unrecognised to look on me, and that must never, never go away with a soreness at her heart, saying, 'She was not there!' Every loaf that I give to a stranger, I say, 'Pray for the soul of Agnes of Anjou!' And then, if some day she should creep in among the rest, and I should not know her--ah! but I think I should, if it were only by the mother-hunger in the eyes--but if she should, and hear that, and yet not speak, she will say in her heart, 'Sybil loves me yet.' And if she could only creep one step further,--'_God_ loves me yet!' For He does, Helena. Maybe He has comforted her long ago: but if she should not have found it out, and be still stretching forth numb hands in the darkness--and if I could say it to her! Now thou knowest why I call the babe by her name. I know not where she is, nor indeed if she is on earth. But He knows. And He may let her hear it. If she come to know that I have called my child by her name, she may not feel quite so lost and lonely. I have no other way to say to her,--'I have not forgotten thee; nor has God. I love thee; I would fain help thee. He loves thee and is ready to save thee.' Who can tell?--she _may_ hear."