But over the Tower a hush still brooded heavily. It was like a prisoner who waits in the dark for his trial. He knows not how great his crime will prove to have been. Again and again he guesses its consequences. Meanwhile his judge eats and sleeps and has not yet heard of him. Something of this uncertainty hung over all that household until they knew how gravely the Duke had been wronged and if he would surely recover. And still none dare approach him but Mirandola. And on this day the Duke spoke with her, not merely answering questions that she asked of him concerning the food or drink that he desired, but talking of small things distant from that house. And she sat so long while they talked that all the house grew troubled; for only from Mirandola could they learn how the Duke fared. All the while that she tarried their alarm was growing, and when at length she appeared it was anxious questions they asked of her.
The Duke was no worse, she said.
“And his anger? What of his anger?” one asked of her tremulously.
“He has his whims,” she said; “but he is not angry.”
She returned to the room in which her parents sat with Gulvarez. And there she found a certain restraint as they spoke with her, for the same strange thing all at once had surprised all three; and this was that in the sore perplexity that had come upon them, and of which they had thought so deeply for six days, the key seemed suddenly in the hands of Mirandola. She knew how he fared, knew that he would recover; above all she seemed to be able to soothe his wrath. Terrible menaces seemed to be lifting, of which the worst was that the Duke should die; but after that they feared almost as much his recovery, dreading what he might do for the insult that had been offered him. But now it seemed, at least to Gonsalvo, and was indeed obvious to all, that if Mirandola could thus soothe his wrath it might be averted from all of them. Then Gonsalvo and Gulvarez walked in the garden and planned how, when the Duke should be recovered, Mirandola should lead him out to the road with his bowmen, so that he should pass neither his host nor his friend, who would be at that time in the garden; and the Duke should not see Gulvarez till long after, when his wrath was abated, and Gonsalvo never again. From this planning they soon returned well satisfied; Gonsalvo, his mind now eased of a burden that had weighed on it for six days, was telling volubly of old hunts he had known; while Gulvarez meditated gallant phrases, and stepped gaily into the house all ready to utter them to Mirandola. But Mirandola was gone again to sit and talk with the Duke.
XXIX
The Casket of Silver and Oak Is Given to Señor Gulvarez
This was the seventh day of the Duke’s illness. Of his wrath none knew, for he had no wrath for Mirandola, and none else durst venture into his presence to see. But his illness was waning fast, and it was clear that all his strength would soon be recovered. Soon he would be up and away. “And then,” thought Gonsalvo, “Father Joseph must come, and farewell to my fair fields.” So he went that morning to see the three fields that he loved, with the dew still on them, and the shade of the forest lying still over half of them. He had gone wondering if they could be really so fair as they seemed to be in the picture his memory had of them. Alas! They were. It would have cheered him to find that they were but common fields. But no, there was a glamour about them; something dwelling perhaps in the forest seemed to have stolen out and enchanted them; they lay there deep as ever in their old mystery, under a gauzy grey of spiders’ webs and dew. And that old feeling lay over them all in the morning, which we feel when we speak of home. They were very ordinary fields, lying under dew in the morning; and very ordinary tears came into Gonsalvo’s eyes, for he was a simple man, and the roots of the grasses that grew there seemed tangled up somehow or other all amongst his heartstrings.
Looking there long at his fields he became aware of a man approaching across them and looking carefully at them as he came. It was Gulvarez. He also had come to see if they were really as fair as had been thought.
The sun now came over the tips of the trees, and Gonsalvo stared at it awhile. “Very bright,” he said, as Gulvarez came up.
“Aye,” said Gulvarez jovially, “a merry day.” And then he spake more gravely. “Yonder stile,” he said, “will need much repairing.”
It was an old stile whose wood was damp and soft, and moss and strange things grew on it. Grand old
