The Forest Lovers

Prosper waited in silence, in a crowd equally silent.

The seneschal shortly returned.

"Her ladyship will see Messire at once. I beg Messire to follow me."

He entered the Countess's chamber, and, lifting his head, looked at a

white lady on a throne. He had never seen her so before. She was

dressed in pure white, with a face near as dead as her clothes. All

that was dark about it haunted her masked eyes. She sat with her chin

in her hand, looking and waiting for him; when he came, and the

seneschal was dismissed with a curt nod, she still sat in the same

dead fashion, watchful of her guest, unwinking, pondering. Prosper,

for his part, bided the time. He guessed what was coming, but a word

from him might have put him in the wrong.

In the end the Countess broke the long silence. He thought he had

never heard her voice; it sounded like that of a tired old woman.

"I had thought to find in you, my lord, the son of an old friend, like

in spirit as in blood to him whom at first I sought to honour in you.

I find I have been mistaken, but for your father's sake I will not

tell you how much nor by what degrees. Rather I will beg you go at

once from my house."

Said Prosper-"Madam, for my father's sake, if not for mine, you will tell much more

than this to his son. Have your words any hint of reference to the

Lady Isoult? Speak of her, madam, as you would speak of my mother, for

she is my wife."

The Countess shrank back in her throne as if to avoid a whip. She

cowered there. Her eyes dilated, though she seemed incapable of seeing

anything at all; her mouth opened gradually--Prosper expected her to

scream--till it formed a round O, a pale ring circling black. Prosper,

having delivered his blow, waited in his turn; though his breath

whistled through his nostrils his lips were shut, his head still very

high. The blow was a shrewd one for the lady. You might have counted

twenty before she began to talk to herself in a whisper. Prosper

thought she was mad.

"I should have known--I should have known--I should have known," she

whispered, very fast, as people whisper on a death-bed.

"Madam," he broke in, "certainly you should have known had it seemed

possible to tell you. Even now I can tell you no more than the bare

fact, which is as I have stated it. And so it must be for the moment,

until I have completed an adventure begun. But so much as I tell you

now I might have told you before. It is shame to me that I did not.

Marriage to me is a new thing, love still a strange thing. Had I

thought then as I now do, be sure you would never have seen me here

without my wife, whom now, madam, I will pray leave to present to you,

the Lady Isoult le Gai."