“Come, come, Laure! Rise, and go into thine own room here. I have laid out one of the old-time gowns, with shoes, chemise, bliault, and under-tunic complete, and also a wimple and head-veil. Make thyself ready for the day, while we go down to break our fast. When thou’rt dressed I will have food brought thee here; and after thou’st eaten, monseigneur will come up to thee. Hasten, for ’tis rarely cold!”
Laure jumped from the bed eager to see her childhood’s room again; eager for her meal; most of all eager, in spite of her apprehensiveness, to know what St. Nazaire had to say to her. As she paused to gather her mantle close about her, and to push the hair out of her eyes, her gaze chanced to meet that of Lenore. There was between them no spoken word; but in that instant was born a sudden affection which, while they lived together, saw not the end of its growth.
As Eleanore and the two young women left madame’s room on their way downstairs, Laure entered alone into the room of her youth and her innocence. It was exactly as it had been on the day she last saw it. The small, curtained bed was ready for occupancy. The chairs, the table, the round steel mirror, the carved wooden chest for clothes, lastly, the small priedieu, were just where they had always stood. The wooden shutters were open, and the half-transparent glass was all aflame with the reflection of sunlight on the sea; for the cold, clear morning was advancing. Across a narrow settle, beside one of the windows, lay the clothes that the mother had selected,—the girlhood clothes that she had worn in those years of her other life. Like one that dimly dreams, Laure took these garments up, one by one, and examined them, handling them with the same ruminative tenderness of touch that she might have used for some one that had been very dear to her, but had died long since,—so long that the bitterness of death had gone from memory.
When she had looked at them for a long time, Laure began slowly to don her clothes. She performed her toilet with all the precision of her maidenhood, coiling her hair with a care that suggested vanity, and adjusting her filet and veil with the same touch that they had known so many times before. Her outer tunic was of green _saie_; and even though her whole form had grown deplorably thin, she found it a little snug in bust and hip. Finally, when she was quite dressed, she sat down at one of the windows to wait for some one to bring food to her. To her surprise, it was Lenore who carried up the tray of bread and milk; and she found herself a little relieved that no former member of the Castle was to see her yet in the familiar dress of long ago. When she took the tray from the frail white hands of her sister-in-law, she murmured gratefully: “I thank thee that thou hast deigned to wait on me, madame.”