After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the Countess came to Rosamund’s bed.  “Ay,” the woman began, “it is indisputable that his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes resemble sun-drenched waters in June.  It is certain that when this Gregory laughs God is more happy.  Girl, I was familiar with the routine of your meditations before you were born.”

Rosamund said, quite simply:  “You have known him always.  I envy the circumstance, Madame Gertrude—­you alone of all women in the world I envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him always.”

“I know him to the core, my girl,” the Countess answered.  For a while she sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly.  “Yet I am two years his junior—­Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?” “No, Madame Gertrude, I heard nothing.”

“Strange!” the Countess said; “let us have lights, since I can no longer endure this overpopulous twilight.”  She kindled, with twitching fingers, three lamps.  “It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very oddly, as though they would rise from the floor—­do they not, my girl?—­and protest vain things.  But, Rosamund, it has been done; in the moment of death men’s souls have travelled farther and have been visible; it has been done, I tell you.  And he would stand before me, with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in a voice too faint to reach my ears—­but I would see him—­and his groping hands would clutch at my hands as though a dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I would go mad!”

“Madame Gertrude!” the girl stammered, in communicated terror.

“Poor innocent fool!” the woman said, “I am Ysabeau of France.”  And when Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by the shoulder.  “Bear witness when he comes that I never hated him.  Yet for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, pampered body, and no mark be left upon it!  Eia! even now he suffers!  No, I have lied.  I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will comprehend when you are Sarum’s wife.”

“Madame and Queen!” the girl said, “you will not murder me!” “I am tempted!” the Queen answered.  “O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost.  Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet dreams, and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory Darrell’s love—­” Now Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl’s face between two fevered hands.  “Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I do, that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love he bore a certain maid long dead.  Eh, you might have been her sister, Rosamund, for you are very like her.  And she, poor wench—­why, I could see her now, I think, were my eyes not blurred, somehow, almost as though Queen Ysabeau might weep!  But she was handsomer than you, since your complexion is not overclear, praise God!”