'tis because of this that one of us cannot be proud with the other, for there is no other, there is only one. And I am wrong to say, 'Let me not rule,' for 'tis as if I said, 'You must not rule.' I meant surely, 'God give me strength to be as noble in ruling as our love should make me.' But just as one tree is a beech and one an oak, just as the grass stirs when the summer wind blows over it, so a woman is a woman, and 'tis her nature to find her joy in saying such words to the man who loves her, when she loves as I do. Her heart is so full that she must joy to say her husband's name as that of one she cannot think without--who is her life as is her blood and her pulses beating. 'Tis a joy to say your name, Gerald, as it will be a joy"--and she looked far out across the sun- goldened valley and plains, with a strange, heavenly sweet smile -- "as it will be a joy to say our child's--and put his little mouth to my full breast."

"Sweet love," he cried, drawing her by the hand that he might meet the radiance of her look--"heart's dearest!"

She did not withhold her lovely eyes from him, but withdrew them from the sunset's mist of gold, and the clouds piled as it were at the gates of heaven, and they seemed to bring back some of the far- off glory with them. Indeed, neither her smile nor she seemed at that moment to be things of earth. She held out her fair, noble arms, and he sprang to her, and so they stood, side beating against side.

"Yes, love," she said--"yes, love--and I have prayed, my Gerald, that I may give you sons who shall be men like you. But when I give you women children, I shall pray with all my soul for them--that they may be just and strong and noble, and life begin for them as it began not for me."

---

In the morning of a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower. Children stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn; good gossips ran out of their cottage door, wiping their arms dry, from their tubs and scrubbing-buckets, their honest red faces broadening into maternal grins.

"Ay, 'tis well over, that means surely," one said to the other; "and a happy day has begun for the poor lady--though God knows she bore herself queenly to the very last, as if she could have carried her burden for another year, and blenched not a bit as other women do. Bless mother and child, say I."

"And 'tis an heir," said another. "She promised us that we should know almost as quick as she did, and commanded old Rowe to ring a peal, and then strike one bell loud between if 'twere a boy, and two if 'twere a girl child. 'Tis a boy, heard you, and 'twas like her wit to invent such a way to tell us."

In four other villages the chimes rang just as loud and merrily, and the women talked, and blessed her Grace and her young child, and casks of ale were broached, and oxen roasted, and work stopped, and dancers footed it upon the green.

"Surely the new-born thing comes here to happiness," 'twas said everywhere, "for never yet was woman loved as is his mother."

In her stately bed her Grace the duchess lay, with the face of the Mother Mary, and her man-child drinking from her breast. The duke walked softly up and down, so full of joy that he could not sit still. When he had entered first, it was his wife's self who had sate upright in her bed, and herself laid his son within his arms.

"None other shall lay him there," she said, "I have given him to you. He is a great child, but he has not taken from me my strength."

He was indeed a great child, even at his first hour, of limbs and countenance so noble that nurses and physicians regarded him amazed. He was the offspring of a great love, of noble bodies and great souls. Did such powers alone create human beings, the earth would be peopled with a race of giants.

Amid the veiled spring sunshine and the flower-scented silence, broken only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf hand and the lace frill of his mother's night-rail. She dared not further disturb them.

"Sure God forgives," she breathed--"for Christ's sake. He would not give this little tender thing a punishment to bear."

CHAPTER XXII--Mother Anne

There was no punishment. The tender little creature grew as a blossom grows from bud to fairest bloom. His mother flowered as he, and spent her days in noble cherishing of him and tender care. Such motherhood and wifehood as were hers were as fair statues raised to Nature's self.

"Once I thought that I was under ban," she said to her lord in one of their sweetest hours; "but I have been given love and a life, and so I know it cannot be. Do I fill all your being, Gerald?"

"All, all!" he cried, "my sweet, sweet woman."

"Leave I no longing unfulfilled, no duty undone, to you, dear love, to the world, to human suffering I might aid? I pray Christ with all passionate humbleness that I may not."

"He grants your prayer," he answered, his eyes moist with worshipping tenderness.

"And this white soul given to me from the outer bounds we know not-- it has no stain; and the little human body it wakened to life in-- think you that Christ will help me to fold them in love high and pure enough, and teach the human body to do honour to its soul? 'Tis not monkish scorn of itself that I would teach the body; it is so beautiful and noble a thing, and so full of the power of joy. Surely That which made it--in His own image--would not that it should despise itself and its own wonders, but do them reverence, and rejoice in them nobly, knowing all their seasons and their changes, counting not youth folly, and manhood sinful, or age aught but gentle ripeness passing onward? I pray for a great soul, and great wit, and greater power to help this fair human thing to grow, and love, and live."

These had been born and had rested hid within her when she lay a babe struggling 'neath her dead mother's corpse. Through the darkness of untaught years they had grown but slowly, being so unfitly and unfairly nourished; but Life's sun but falling on her, they seemed to strive to fair fruition with her days.

'Twas not mere love she gave her offspring--for she bore others as years passed, until she was the mother of four sons and two girls, children of strength and beauty as noted as her own; she gave them of her constant thought, and an honour of their humanity such as taught them reverence of themselves as of all other human things. Their love for her was such a passion as their father bore her. She was the noblest creature that they knew; her beauty, her great unswerving love, her truth, were things bearing to their child eyes the unchangingness of God's stars in heaven.

"Why is she not the Queen?" a younger one asked his father once, having been to London and seen the Court. "The Queen is not so beautiful and grand as she, and she could so well reign over the people. She is always just and honourable, and fears nothing."

From her side Mistress Anne was rarely parted. In her fair retreat at Camylott she had lived a life all undisturbed by outward things. When the children were born strange joy came to her.

"Be his mother also," the duchess had said when she had drawn the clothes aside to show her first-born sleeping in her arm. "You were made to be the mother of things, Anne."

"Nay, or they had been given to me," Anne had answered.

"Mine I will share with you," her Grace had said, lifting her Madonna face. "Kiss me, sister--kiss him, too, and bless him. Your life has been so innocent it must be good that you should love and guard him."

'Twas sweet to see the wit she showed in giving to poor Anne the feeling that she shared her motherhood. She shared her tenderest cares and duties with her. Together they bathed and clad the child in the morning, this being their high festival, in which the nurses shared but in the performance of small duties. Each day they played with him and laughed as women will at such dear times, kissing his grand round limbs, crying out at their growth, worshipping his little rosy feet, and smothering him with caresses. And then they put him to sleep, Anne sitting close while his mother fed him from her breast until his small red mouth parted and slowly released her.

When he could toddle about and was beginning to say words, there was a morning when she bore him to Anne's tower that they might joy in him together, as was their way. It was a beautiful thing to see her walk carrying him in the strong and lovely curve of her arm as if his sturdy babyhood were of no more weight than a rose, and he cuddling against her, clinging and crowing, his wide brown eyes shining with delight.

"He has come to pay thee court, Anne," she said. "He is a great gallant, and knows how we are his loving slaves. He comes to say his new word that I have taught him."

She set him down where he stood holding to Anne's knee and showing his new pearl teeth, in a rosy grin; his mother knelt beside him, beginning her coaxing.

"Who is she?" she said, pointing with her finger at Anne's face, her own full of lovely fear lest the child should not speak rightly his lesson. "What is her name? Mammy's man say--" and she mumbled softly with her crimson mouth at his ear.

The child looked up at Anne, with baby wit and laughter in his face, and stammered sweetly -

"Muz--Muzzer--Anne," he said, and then being pleased with his cleverness, danced on his little feet and said it over and over.

Clorinda caught him up and set him on Anne's lap.

"Know you what he calls you?" she said. "'Tis but a mumble, his little tongue is not nimble enough for clearness, but he says it his pretty best. 'Tis Mother Anne, he says--'tis Mother Anne."

And then they were in each other's arms, the child between them, he kissing both and clasping both, with little laughs of joy as if they were but one creature.

Each child born they clasped and kissed so, and were so clasped and kissed by; each one calling the tender unwed woman "Mother Anne," and having a special lovingness for her, she being the creature each one seemed to hover about with innocent protection and companionship.

The wonder of Anne's life grew deeper to her hour by hour, and where she had before loved, she learned to worship, for 'twas indeed worship that her soul was filled with. She could not look back and believe that she had not dreamed a dream of all the fears gone by and that they held. This--this was true--the beauty of these days, the love of them, the generous deeds, the sweet courtesies, and gentle words spoken. This beauteous woman dwelling in her husband's heart, giving him all joy of life and love, ruling queenly and gracious in his house, bearing him noble children, and tending them with the very genius of tenderness and wisdom.

But in Mistress Anne herself life had never been strong; she was of the fibre of her mother, who had died in youth, crushed by its cruel weight, and to her, living had been so great and terrible a thing. There had not been given to her the will to battle with the Fate that fell to her, the brain to reason and disentangle problems, or the power to set them aside. So while her Grace of Osmonde seemed but to gain greater state and beauty in her ripening, her sister's frail body grew more frail, and seemed to shrink and age. Yet her face put on a strange worn sweetness, and her soft, dull eyes had a look almost like a saint's who looks at heaven. She prayed much, and did many charitable works both in town and country. She read her books of devotion, and went much to church, sitting with a reverend face through many a dull and lengthy sermon she would have felt it sacrilegious to think of with aught but pious admiration. In the middle of the night it was her custom to rise and offer up prayers through the dark hours. She was an humble soul who greatly feared and trembled before her God.

"I waken in the night sometimes," the fair, tall child Daphne said once to her mother, "and Mother Anne is there--she kneels and prays beside my bed. She kneels and prays so by each one of us many a night."

"'Tis because she is so pious a woman and so loves us," said young John, in his stately, generous way. The house of Osmonde had never had so fine and handsome a creature for its heir. He o'ertopped every boy of his age in height, and the bearing of his lovely youthful body was masculine grace itself.

The town and the Court knew these children, and talked of their beauty and growth as they had talked of their mother's.

"To be the mate of such a woman, the father of such heirs, is a fate a man might pray God for," 'twas said. "Love has not grown stale with them. Their children are the very blossoms of it. Her eyes are deeper pools of love each year."

CHAPTER XXIII--"In One who will do justice, and demands that it shall be done to each thing He has made, by each who bears His image"

'Twas in these days Sir Jeoffry came to his end, it being in such way as had been often prophesied; and when this final hour came, there was but one who could give him comfort, and this was the daughter whose youth he had led with such careless evilness to harm.

If he had wondered at her when she had been my Lady Dunstanwolde, as her Grace of Osmonde he regarded her with heavy awe. Never had she been able to lead him to visit her at her house in town or at any other which was her home. "'Tis all too grand for me, your Grace," he would say; "I am a country yokel, and have hunted and drank, and lived too hard to look well among town gentlemen. I must be drunk at dinner, and when I am in liquor I am no ornament to a duchess's drawing-room. But what a woman you have grown," he would say, staring at her and shaking his head. "Each time I clap eyes on you 'tis to marvel at you, remembering what a baggage you were, and how you kept from slipping by the way. There was Jack Oxon, now," he added one day--"after you married Dunstanwolde, I heard a pretty tale of Jack--that he had made a wager among his friends in town--he was a braggart devil, Jack--that he would have you, though you were so scornful; and knowing him to be a liar, his fellows said that unless he could bring back a raven lock six feet long to show them, he had lost his bet, for they would believe no other proof. And finely they scoffed at him when he came back saying that he had had one, but had hid it away for safety when he was drunk, and could not find it again. They so flouted and jeered at him that swords were drawn, and blood as well. But though he was a beauty and a crafty rake-hell fellow, you were too sharp for him. Had you not had so shrewd a wit and strong a will, you would not have been the greatest duchess in England, Clo, as well as the finest woman."

"Nay," she answered--"in those days--nay, let us not speak of them! I would blot them out--out."

As time went by, and the years spent in drink and debauchery began to tell even on the big, strong body which should have served any other man bravely long past his threescore and ten, Sir Jeoffry drank harder and lived more wildly, sometimes being driven desperate by dulness, his coarse pleasures having lost their potency.

"Liquor is not as strong as it once was," he used to grumble, "and there are fewer things to stir a man to frolic. Lord, what roaring days and nights a man could have thirty years ago."

So in his efforts to emulate such nights and days, he plunged deeper and deeper into new orgies; and one night, after a heavy day's hunting, sitting at the head of his table with his old companions, he suddenly leaned forward, staring with starting eyes at an empty chair in a dark corner. His face grew purple, and he gasped and gurgled.

"What is't, Jeoff?" old Eldershawe cried, touching his shoulder with a shaking hand. "What's the man staring at, as if he had gone mad?"

"Jack," cried Sir Jeoffry, his eyes still farther starting from their sockets. "Jack! what say you? I cannot hear."

The next instant he sprang up, shrieking, and thrusting with his hands as if warding something off.

"Keep back!" he yelled. "There is green mould on thee. Where hast thou been to grow mouldy? Keep back! Where hast thou been?"

His friends at table started up, staring at him and losing colour; he shrieked so loud and strangely, he clutched his hair with his hands, and fell into his chair, raving, clutching, and staring, or dashing his head down upon the table to hide his face, and then raising it as if he could not resist being drawn in his affright to gaze again. There was no soothing him. He shouted, and struggled with those who would have held him. 'Twas Jack Oxon who was there, he swore--Jack, who kept stealing slowly nearer to him, his face and his fine clothes damp and green, he beat at the air with mad hands, and at last fell upon the floor, and rolled, foaming at the mouth.

They contrived, after great strugglings, to bear him to his chamber, but it took the united strength of all who would stay near him to keep him from making an end of himself. By the dawn of day his boon companions stood by him with their garments torn to tatters, their faces drenched with sweat, and their own eyes almost starting from their sockets; the doctor who had been sent for, coming in no hurry, but scowled and shook his head when he beheld him.

"He is a dead man," he said, "and the wonder is that this has not come before. He is sodden with drink and rotten with ill-living, besides being past all the strength of youth. He dies of the life he has lived."

'Twas little to be expected that his boon companions could desert their homes and pleasures and tend his horrors longer than a night. Such a sight as he presented did not inspire them to cheerful spirits.

"Lord," said Sir Chris Crowell, "to see him clutch his flesh and shriek and mouth, is enough to make a man live sober for his remaining days," and he shook his big shoulders with a shudder.

"Ugh!" he said, "God grant I may make a better end. He writhes as in hell-fire."

"There is but one on earth who will do aught for him," said Eldershawe. "'Tis handsome Clo, who is a duchess; but she will come and tend him, I could swear. Even when she was a lawless devil of a child she had a way of standing by her friends and fearing naught."

So after taking counsel together they sent for her, and in as many hours as it took to drive from London, her coach stood before the door. By this time all the household was panic-stricken and in hopeless disorder, the women-servants scattered and shuddering in far corners of the house; such men as could get out of the way having found work to do afield or in the kennels, for none had nerve to stay where they could hear the madman's shrieks and howls.

Her Grace, entering the house, went with her woman straight to her chamber, and shortly emerged therefrom, stripped of her rich apparel, and clad in a gown of strong blue linen, her hair wound close, her white hands bare of any ornament, save the band of gold which was her wedding-ring. A serving-woman might have been clad so; but the plainness of her garb but made her height, and strength, so reveal themselves, that the mere sight of her woke somewhat that was like to awe in the eyes of the servants who beheld her as she passed.

She needed not to be led, but straightway followed the awful sounds, until she reached the chamber behind whose door they were shut. Upon the huge disordered bed, Sir Jeoffry writhed, and tried to tear himself, his great sinewy and hairy body almost stark. Two of the stable men were striving to hold him.

The duchess went to his bedside and stood there, laying her strong white hand upon his shuddering shoulder.

"Father," she said, in a voice so clear, and with such a ring of steady command, as, the men said later, might have reached a dead man's ear. "Father, 'tis Clo!"

Sir Jeoffry writhed his head round and glared at her, with starting eyes and foaming mouth.

"Who says 'tis Clo?" he shouted. "'Tis a lie! She was ever a bigger devil than any other, though she was but a handsome wench. Jack himself could not manage her. She beat him, and would beat him now. 'Tis a lie!"

All through that day and night the power of her Grace's white arm was the thing which saved him from dashing out his brains. The two men could not have held him, and at his greatest frenzy they observed that now and then his blood-shot eye would glance aside at the beauteous face above him. The sound of the word "Clo" had struck upon his brain and wakened an echo.

She sent away the men to rest, calling for others in their places; but leave the bedside herself she would not. 'Twas a strange thing to see her strength and bravery, which could not be beaten down. When the doctor came again he found her there, and changed his surly and reluctant manner in the presence of a duchess, and one who in her close linen gown wore such a mien.

"You should not have left him," she said to him unbendingly, "even though I myself can see there is little help that can be given. Thought you his Grace and I would brook that he should die alone if we could not have reached him?"

Those words "his Grace and I" put a new face upon the matter, and all was done that lay within the man's skill; but most was he disturbed concerning the lady, who would not be sent to rest, and whose noble consort would be justly angered if she were allowed to injure her superb health.

"His Grace knew what I came to do and how I should do it," the duchess said, unbending still. "But for affairs of State which held him, he would have been here at my side."

She held her place throughout the second night, and that was worse than the first--the paroxysms growing more and more awful; for Jack was within a yard, and stretched out a green and mouldy hand, the finger-bones showing through the flesh, the while he smiled awfully.

At last one pealing scream rang out after another, until after making his shuddering body into an arc resting on heels and head, the madman fell exhausted, his flesh all quaking before the eye. Then the duchess waved the men who helped, away. She sat upon the bed's edge close--close to her father's body, putting her two firm hands on either of his shoulders, holding him so, and bent down, looking into his wild face, as if she fixed upon his very soul all the power of her wondrous will.

"Father," she said, "look at my face. Thou canst if thou wilt. Look at my face. Then wilt thou see 'tis Clo--and she will stand by thee."

She kept her gaze upon his very pupils; and though 'twas at first as if his eyes strove to break away from her look, their effort was controlled by her steadfastness, and they wandered back at last, and her great orbs held them. He heaved a long breath, half a big, broken sob, and lay still, staring up at her.

"Ay," he said, "'tis Clo! 'tis Clo!"

The sweat began to roll from his forehead, and the tears down his cheeks. He broke forth, wailing like a child.

"Clo--Clo," he said, "I am in hell."

She put her hand on his breast, keeping will and eyes set on him.

"Nay," she answered; "thou art on earth, and in thine own bed, and I am here, and will not leave thee."

She made another sign to the men who stood and stared aghast in wonder at her, but feeling in the very air about her the spell to which the madness had given way.

"'Twas not mere human woman who sat there," they said afterwards in the stables among their fellows. "'Twas somewhat more. Had such a will been in an evil thing a man's hair would have risen on his skull at the seeing of it."

"Go now," she said to them, "and send women to set the place in order."

She had seen delirium and death enough in the doings of her deeds of mercy, to know that his strength had gone and death was coming. His bed and room were made orderly, and at last he lay in clean linen, with all made straight. Soon his eyes seemed to sink into his head and stare from hollows, and his skin grew grey, but ever he stared only at his daughter's face.

"Clo," he said at last, "stay by me! Clo, go not away!"

"I shall not go," she answered.

She drew a seat close to his bed and took his hand. It lay knotted and gnarled and swollen-veined upon her smooth palm, and with her other hand she stroked it. His breath came weak and quick, and fear grew in his eyes.

"What is it, Clo?" he said. "What is't?"

"'Tis weakness," replied she, soothing him. "Soon you will sleep."

"Ay," he said, with a breath like a sob. "'Tis over."

His big body seemed to collapse, he shrank so in the bed-clothes.

"What day o' the year is it?" he asked.

"The tenth of August," was her answer.

"Sixty-nine years from this day was I born," he said, "and now 'tis done."

"Nay," said she--"nay--God grant--"

"Ay," he said, "done. Would there were nine and sixty more. What a man I was at twenty. I want not to die, Clo. I want to live--to live--live, and be young," gulping, "with strong muscle and moist flesh. Sixty-nine years--and they are gone!"

He clung to her hand, and stared at her with awful eyes. Through all his life he had been but a great, strong, human carcass; and he was now but the same carcass worn out, and at death's door. Of not one human thing but of himself had he ever thought, not one creature but himself had he ever loved--and now he lay at the end, harking back only to the wicked years gone by.

"None can bring them back," he shuddered. "Not even thou, Clo, who art so strong. None--none! Canst pray, Clo?" with the gasp of a craven.

"Not as chaplains do," she answered. "I believe not in a God who clamours but for praise."

"What dost believe in, then?"

"In One who will do justice, and demands that it shall be done to each thing He has made, by each who bears His image--ay, and mercy too--but justice always, for justice is mercy's highest self."

Who knows the mysteries of the human soul--who knows the workings of the human brain? The God who is just alone. In this man's mind, which was so near a simple beast's in all its movings, some remote, unborn consciousness was surely reached and vaguely set astir by the clear words thus spoken.

"Clo, Clo!" he cried, "Clo, Clo!" in terror, clutching her the closer, "what dost thou mean? In all my nine and sixty years--" and rolled his head in agony.

In all his nine and sixty years he had shown justice to no man, mercy to no woman, since he had thought of none but Jeoffry Wildairs; and this truth somehow dimly reached his long-dulled brain and wakened there.

"Down on thy knees, Clo!" he gasped--"down on thy knees!"

It was so horrible, the look struggling in his dying face, that she went down upon her knees that moment, and so knelt, folding his shaking hands within her own against her breast.

"Thou who didst make him as he was born into Thy world," she said, "deal with that to which Thou didst give life--and death. Show him in this hour, which Thou mad'st also, that Thou art not Man who would have vengeance, but that justice which is God."

"Then--then," he gasped--"then will He damn me!"

"He will weigh thee," she said; "and that which His own hand created will He separate from that which was thine own wilful wrong--and this, sure, He will teach thee how to expiate."

"Clo," he cried again -"thy mother--she was but a girl, and died alone--I did no justice to her!--Daphne! Daphne!" And he shook beneath the bed-clothes, shuddering to his feet, his face growing more grey and pinched.

"She loved thee once," Clorinda said. "She was a gentle soul, and would not forget. She will show thee mercy."

"Birth she went through," he muttered, "and death--alone. Birth and death! Daphne, my girl--" And his voice trailed off to nothingness, and he lay staring at space, and panting.

The duchess sat by him and held his hand. She moved not, though at last he seemed to fall asleep. Two hours later he began to stir. He turned his head slowly upon his pillows until his gaze rested upon her, as she sat fronting him. 'Twas as though he had awakened to look at her.

"Clo!" he cried, and though his voice was but a whisper, there was both wonder and wild question in it--"Clo!"

But she moved not, her great eyes meeting his with steady gaze; and even as they so looked at each other his body stretched itself, his lids fell--and he was a dead man.

CHAPTER XXIV--The doves sate upon the window-ledge and lowly cooed and cooed

When they had had ten years of happiness, Anne died. 'Twas of no violent illness, it seemed but that through these years of joy she had been gradually losing life. She had grown thinner and whiter, and her soft eyes bigger and more prayerful. 'Twas in the summer, and they were at Camylott, when one sweet day she came from the flower-garden with her hands full of roses, and sitting down by her sister in her morning-room, swooned away, scattering her blossoms on her lap and at her feet.

When she came back to consciousness she looked up at the duchess with a strange, far look, as if her soul had wandered back from some great distance.

"Let me be borne to bed, sister," she said. "I would lie still. I shall not get up again."

The look in her face was so unearthly and a thing so full of mystery, that her Grace's heart stood still, for in some strange way she knew the end had come.

They bore her to her tower and laid her in her bed, when she looked once round the room and then at her sister.

"'Tis a fair, peaceful room," she said. "And the prayers I have prayed in it have been answered. To-day I saw my mother, and she told me so."

"Anne! Anne!" cried her Grace, leaning over her and gazing fearfully into her face; for though her words sounded like delirium, her look had no wildness in it. And yet--"Anne, Anne! you wander, love," the duchess cried.

Anne smiled a strange, sweet smile. "Perchance I do," she said. "I know not truly, but I am very happy. She said that all was over, and that I had not done wrong. She had a fair, young face, with eyes that seemed to have looked always at the stars of heaven. She said I had done no wrong."

The duchess's face laid itself down upon the pillow, a river of clear tears running down her cheeks.

"Wrong!" she said--"you! dear one--woman of Christ's heart, if ever lived one. You were so weak and I so strong, and yet as I look back it seems that all of good that made me worthy to be wife and mother I learned from your simplicity."

Through the tower window and the ivy closing round it, the blueness of the summer sky was heavenly fair; soft, and light white clouds floated across the clearness of its sapphire. On this Anne's eyes were fixed with an uplifted tenderness until she broke her silence.

"Soon I shall be away," she said. "Soon all will be left behind. And I would tell you that my prayers were answered--and so, sure, yours will be."

No man could tell what made the duchess then fall on her knees, but she herself knew. 'Twas that she saw in the exalted dying face that turned to hers concealing nothing more.

"Anne! Anne!" she cried. "Sister Anne! Mother Anne of my children! You have known--you have known all the years and kept it hid!"

She dropped her queenly head and shielded the whiteness of her face in the coverlid's folds.

"Ay, sister," Anne said, coming a little back to earth, "and from the first. I found a letter near the sun-dial--I guessed--I loved you--and could do naught else but guard you. Many a day have I watched within the rose-garden--many a day--and night--God pardon me--and night. When I knew a letter was hid, 'twas my wont to linger near, knowing that my presence would keep others away. And when you approached--or he--I slipped aside and waited beyond the rose hedge--that if I heard a step, I might make some sound of warning. Sister, I was your sentinel, and being so, knelt while on my guard, and prayed."

"My sentinel!" Clorinda cried. "And knowing all, you so guarded me night and day, and prayed God's pity on my poor madness and girl's frenzy!" And she gazed at her in amaze, and with humblest, burning tears.

"For my own poor self as well as for you, sister, did I pray God's pity as I knelt," said Anne. "For long I knew it not--being so ignorant--but alas! I loved him too!--I loved him too! I have loved no man other all my days. He was unworthy any woman's love-- and I was too lowly for him to cast a glance on; but I was a woman, and God made us so."

Clorinda clutched her pallid hand.