"My dear," replied the old gentleman, "it does matter. Fiefs last."

So he gave his consent to the match, and the two young people were
married on Walburga's Eve, on the day that ends April.

And they narrate how Florian de Puysange was vexed by a thought that was
in his mind. He did not know what this thought was. But something he had
overlooked; something there was he had meant to do, and had not done: and
a troubling consciousness of this lurked at the back of his mind like a
small formless cloud. All day, while bustling about other matters, he had
groped toward this unapprehended thought.

Now he had it: Tiburce.

The young Vicomte de Puysange stood in the doorway, looking back into the
bright hall where they of Storisende were dancing at his marriage feast.
His wife, for a whole half-hour his wife, was dancing with handsome
Etienne de Nerac. Her glance met Florian's, and Adelaide flashed him an
especial smile. Her hand went out as though to touch him, for all that
the width of the hall severed them.

Florian remembered presently to smile back at her. Then he went out of
the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced menace.
A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's secrecy.
The moon this night, afloat in a luminous gray void, somehow reminded
Florian of a glistening and unripe huge apple.

The foliage about him moved at most as a sleeper breathes, while Florian
descended eastward through walled gardens, and so came to the graveyard.
White mists were rising, such mists as the witches of Amneran