Her dull, poor face dropped a little as she spoke the words, and her eyes fell upon the beauteous tiny shoes, which seemed to trample even when no foot was within them. She stooped to take one in her hand, but as she was about to lift it something which seemed to have been dropped upon the floor, and to have rolled beneath the valance of the bed, touched her hand. It was a thing to which a riband was attached—an ivory miniature—and she picked it up wondering. She stood up gazing at it, in such bewilderment to find her eyes upon it that she scarce knew what she did. She did not mean to pry; she would not have had the daring so to do if she had possessed the inclination. But the instant her eyes told her what they saw, she started and blushed as she had never blushed before in her tame life. The warm rose mantled her cheeks, and even suffused the neck her chaste kerchief hid. Her eye kindled with admiration and an emotion new to her indeed.

"How beautiful!" she said. "He is like a young Adonis, and has the bearing of a royal prince! How can it—by what strange chance hath it come here?"

She had not regarded it more than long enough to have uttered these words, when a fear came upon her, and she felt that she had fallen into misfortune.

"What must I do with it?" she trembled. "What will she say, whether she knows of its being within the chamber or not? She will be angry with me that I have dared to touch it. What shall I do?"

She regarded it again with eyes almost suffused. Her blush and the sensibility of her emotion gave to her plain countenance a new liveliness of tint and expression.

"I will put it back where I found it," she said, "and the one who knows it will find it later. It cannot be she—it cannot be she! If I laid it on her table she would rate me bitterly—and she can be bitter when she will."

She bent and placed it within the shadow of the valance again, and as she felt it touch the hard oak of the polished floor her bosom rose with a soft sigh.

"It is an unseemly thing to do," she said; "'tis as though one were uncivil; but I dare not—I dare not do otherwise."

She would have turned to leave the apartment, being much overcome by the incident, but just as she would have done so she heard the sound of horses' feet through the window by which she must pass, and looked out to see if it was Clorinda who was returning from her ride. Mistress Clorinda was a matchless horsewoman, and a marvel of loveliness and spirit she looked when she rode, sitting upon a horse such as no other woman dared to mount—always an animal of the greatest beauty, but of so dangerous a spirit that her riding-whip was loaded like a man's.

This time it was not she; and when Mistress Anne beheld the young gentleman who had drawn rein in the court she started backward and put her hand to her heart, the blood mantling her pale cheek again in a flood. But having started back, the next instant she started forward to gaze again, all her timid soul in her eyes.

"'Tis he!" she panted; "'tis he himself! He hath come in hope to speak with my sister, and she is abroad. Poor gentleman, he hath come in such high spirit, and must ride back heavy of heart. How comely, and how finely clad he is!"

He was, in sooth, with his rich riding-habit, his handsome face, his plumed hat, and the sun shining on the fair luxuriant locks which fell beneath it. It was Sir John Oxon, and he was habited as when he rode in the park in town and the court was there. Not so were attired the country gentry whom Anne had been wont to see, though many of them were well mounted, knowing horseflesh and naught else, as they did.

She pressed her cheek against the side of the oriel window, over which the ivy grew thickly. She was so intent that she could not withdraw her gaze. She watched him as he turned away, having received his dismissal, and she pressed her face closer that she might follow him as he rode down the long avenue of oak-trees, his servant riding behind.

Thus she bent forward gazing, until he turned and the oaks hid him from her sight; and even then the spell was not dissolved, and she still regarded the place where he had passed, until a sound behind her made her start violently. It was a peal of laughter, high and rich, and when she so started and turned to see whom it might be, she beheld her sister Clorinda, who was standing just within the threshold, as if movement had been arrested by what had met her eye as she came in. Poor Anne put her hand to her side again.

"Oh sister!" she gasped; "oh sister!" but could say no more.

She saw that she had thought falsely, and that Clorinda had not been out at all, for she was in home attire; and even in the midst of her trepidation there sprang into Anne's mind the awful thought that through some servant's blunder the comely young visitor had been sent away. For herself, she expected but to be driven forth with wrathful, disdainful words for her presumption. For what else could she hope from this splendid creature, who, while of her own flesh and blood, had never seemed to regard her as being more than a poor superfluous underling? But strangely enough, there was no anger in Clorinda's eyes; she but laughed, as though what she had seen had made her merry.

"You here, Anne," she said, "and looking with light-mindedness after gallant gentlemen! Mistress Margery should see to this and watch more closely, or we shall have unseemly stories told. You, sister, with your modest face and bashfulness! I had not thought it of you."

Suddenly she crossed the room to where her sister stood drooping, and seized her by the shoulder, so that she could look her well in the face.

"What," she said, with a mocking not quite harsh—"What is this? Does a glance at a fine gallant, even taken from behind an oriel window, make such change indeed? I never before saw this look, nor this colour, forsooth; it hath improved thee wondrously, Anne—wondrously."

"Sister," faltered Anne, "I so desired to see your birth-night ball-gown, of which Mistress Margery hath much spoken—I so desired—I thought it would not matter if, the door being open and it spread forth upon the bed—I—I stole a look at it. And then I was tempted—and came in."

"And then was tempted more," Clorinda laughed, still regarding her downcast countenance shrewdly, "by a thing far less to be resisted—a fine gentleman from town, with love-locks falling on his shoulders and ladies' hearts strung at his saddle-bow by scores. Which found you the most beautiful?"

"Your gown is splendid, sister," said Anne, with modest shyness. "There will be no beauty who will wear another like it; or should there be one, she will not carry it as you will."

"But the man—the man, Anne," Clorinda laughed again. "What of the man?"

Anne plucked up just enough of her poor spirit to raise her eyes to the brilliant ones that mocked at her.

"With such gentlemen, sister," she said, "is it like that I have aught to do?"

Mistress Clorinda dropped her hand and left laughing.

"'Tis true," she said, "it is not; but for this one time, Anne, thou lookest almost a woman."

"'Tis not beauty alone that makes womanhood," said Anne, her head on her breast again. "In some book I have read that—that it is mostly pain. I am woman enough for that."

"You have read—you have read," quoted Clorinda. "You are the bookworm, I remember, and filch romances and poems from the shelves. And you have read that it is mostly pain that makes a woman? 'Tis not true. 'Tis a poor lie. I am a woman and I do not suffer—for I will not, that I swear! And when I take an oath I keep it, mark you! It is men women suffer for; that was what your scholar meant—for such fine gentlemen as the one you have just watched while he rode away. More fools they! No man shall make me womanly in such a fashion, I promise you! Let them wince and kneel; I will not."

"Sister," Anne faltered, "I thought you were not within. The gentleman who rode away—did the servants know?"

"That did they," quoth Clorinda, mocking again. "They knew that I would not receive him to-day, and so sent him away. He might have known as much himself, but he is an arrant popinjay, and thinks all women wish to look at his fine shape, and hear him flatter them when he is in the mood."

"You would not—let him enter?"

Clorinda threw her graceful body into a chair with more light laughter.

"I would not", she answered. "You cannot understand such ingratitude, poor Anne; you would have treated him more softly. Sit down and talk to me, and I will show thee my furbelows myself. All women like to chatter of their laced bodices and petticoats. That is what makes a woman."

Anne was tremulous with relief and pleasure. It was as if a queen had bid her to be seated. She sat almost with the humble lack of case a serving-woman might have shown. She had never seen Clorinda wear such an air before, and never had she dreamed that she would so open herself to any fellow-creature. She knew but little of what her sister was capable—of the brilliancy of her charm when she chose to condescend, of the deigning softness of her manner when she chose to please, of her arch- pleasantries and cutting wit, and of the strange power she could wield over any human being, gentle or simple, with whom she came in contact. But if she had not known of these things before, she learned to know them this morning. For some reason best known to herself, Mistress Clorinda was in a high good humour. She kept Anne with her for more than an hour, and was dazzling through every moment of its passing. She showed her the splendours she was to shine in at the birth-night ball, even bringing forth her jewels and displaying them. She told her stories of the house of which the young heir to-day attained his majority, and mocked at the poor youth because he was ungainly, and at a distance had been her slave since his nineteenth year.

"I have scarce looked at him," she said. "He is a lout, with great eyes staring, and a red nose. It does not need that one should look at men to win them. They look at us, and that is enough."

To poor Mistress Anne, who had seen no company and listened to no wits, the entertainment bestowed upon her was as wonderful as a night at the playhouse would have been. To watch the vivid changing face; to hearken to jesting stories of men and women who seemed like the heroes and heroines of her romances; to hear love itself—the love she trembled and palpitated at the mere thought of—spoken of openly as an experience which fell to all; to hear it mocked at with dainty or biting quips; to learn that women of all ages played with, enjoyed, or lost themselves for it—it was with her as if a nun had been withdrawn from her cloister and plunged into the vortex of the world.

"Sister," she said, looking at the Beauty with humble, adoring eyes, "you make me feel that my romances are true. You tell such things. It is like seeing pictures of things to hear you talk. No wonder that all listen to you, for indeed 'tis wonderful the way you have with words. You use them so that 'tis as though they had shapes of their own and colours, and you builded with them. I thank you for being so gracious to me, who have seen so little, and cannot tell the poor, quiet things I have seen."

And being led into the loving boldness by her gratitude, she bent forward and touched with her lips the fair hand resting on the chair's arm.

Mistress Clorinda fixed her fine eyes upon her in a new way.

"I' faith, it doth not seem fair, Anne," she said. "I should not like to change lives with thee. Thou hast eyes like a shot pheasant—soft, and with the bright hid beneath the dull. Some man might love them, even if thou art no beauty. Stay," suddenly; "methinks—"

She uprose from her chair and went to the oaken wardrobe, and threw the door of it open wide while she looked within.

"There is a gown and tippet or so here, and a hood and some ribands I might do without," she said. "My woman shall bear them to your chamber, and show you how to set them to rights. She is a nimble-fingered creature, and a gown of mine would give almost stuff enough to make you two. Then some days, when I am not going abroad and Mistress Margery frets me too much, I will send for you to sit with me, and you shall listen to the gossip when a visitor drops in to have a dish of tea."

Anne would have kissed her feet then, if she had dared to do so. She blushed red all over, and adored her with a more worshipping gaze than before.

"I should not have dared to hope so much," she stammered. "I could not—perhaps it is not fitting—perhaps I could not bear myself as I should. I would try to show myself a gentlewoman and seemly. I—I am a gentlewoman, though I have learned so little. I could not be aught but a gentlewoman, could I, sister, being of your own blood and my parents' child?" half afraid to presume even this much.

"No," said Clorinda. "Do not be a fool, Anne, and carry yourself too humbly before the world. You can be as humble as you like to me."

"I shall—I shall be your servant and worship you, sister," cried the poor soul, and she drew near and kissed again the white hand which had bestowed with such royal bounty all this joy. It would not have occurred to her that a cast-off robe and riband were but small largesse.

It was not a minute after this grateful caress that Clorinda made a sharp movement—a movement which was so sharp that it seemed to be one of dismay. At first, as if involuntarily, she had raised her hand to her tucker, and after doing so she started—though 'twas but for a second's space, after which her face was as it had been before.

"What is it?" exclaimed Anne. "Have you lost anything?"

"No," quoth Mistress Clorinda quite carelessly, as she once more turned to the contents of the oaken wardrobe; "but I thought I missed a trinket I was wearing for a wager, and I would not lose it before the bet is won."

"Sister," ventured Anne before she left her and went away to her own dull world in the west wing, "there is a thing I can do if you will allow me. I can mend your tapestry hangings which have holes in them. I am quick at my needle, and should love to serve you in such poor ways as I can; and it is not seemly that they should be so worn. All things about you should be beautiful and well kept."

"Can you make these broken things beautiful?" said Clorinda. "Then indeed you shall. You may come here to mend them when you will."

"They are very fine hangings, though so old and ill cared for," said Anne, looking up at them; "and I shall be only too happy sitting here thinking of all you are doing while I am at my work."

"Thinking of all I am doing?" laughed Mistress Clorinda. "That would give you such wondrous things to dream of, Anne, that you would have no time for your needle, and my hangings would stay as they are."

"I can think and darn also," said Mistress Anne, "so I will come."



CHAPTER VII—'Twas the face of Sir John Oxon the moon shone upon

From that time henceforward into the young woman's dull life there came a little change. It did not seem a little change to her, but a great one, though to others it would have seemed slight indeed. She was an affectionate, house-wifely creature, who would have made the best of wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her sister, who became the empress of her soul. She darned and patched the tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or as those nuns and novices give to embroidering altar- cloths. There was a brightness in the room that seemed in no other in the house, and the lingering essences in the air of it were as incense to her. In secrecy she even busied herself with keeping things in better order than Rebecca, Mistress Clorinda's woman, had ever had time to do before. She also contrived to get into her own hands some duties that were Rebecca's own. She could mend lace cleverly and arrange riband-knots with taste, and even change the fashion of a gown. The hard- worked tirewoman was but too glad to be relieved, and kept her secret well, being praised many times for the set or fashion of a thing into which she had not so much as set a needle. Being a shrewd baggage, she was wise enough always to relate to Anne the story of her mistress's pleasure, having the wit to read in her delight that she would be encouraged to fresh effort.

At times it so befell that, when Anne went into the bed-chamber, she found the beauty there, who, if she chanced to be in the humour, would detain her in her presence for a space and bewitch her over again. In sooth, it seemed that she took a pleasure in showing her female adorer how wondrously full of all fascinations she could be. At such times Anne's plain face would almost bloom with excitement, and her shot pheasant's eyes would glow as if beholding a goddess.

She neither saw nor heard more of the miniature on the riband. It used to make her tremble at times to fancy that by some strange chance it might still be under the bed, and that the handsome face smiled and the blue eyes gazed in the very apartment where she herself sat and her sister was robed and disrobed in all her beauty.

She used all her modest skill in fitting to her own shape and refurnishing the cast-off bits of finery bestowed upon her. It was all set to rights long before Clorinda recalled to mind that she had promised that Anne should sometime see her chance visitors take their dish of tea with her.

But one day, for some cause, she did remember, and sent for her.

Anne ran to her bed-chamber and donned her remodelled gown with shaking hands. She laughed a little hysterically as she did it, seeing her plain snub-nosed face in the glass. She tried to dress her head in a fashion new to her, and knew she did it ill and untidily, but had no time to change it. If she had had some red she would have put it on, but such vanities were not in her chamber or Barbara's. So she rubbed her cheeks hard, and even pinched them, so that in the end they looked as if they were badly rouged. It seemed to her that her nose grew red too, and indeed 'twas no wonder, for her hands and feet were like ice.

"She must be ashamed of me," the humble creature said to herself. "And if she is ashamed she will be angered and send me away and be friends no more."

She did not deceive herself, poor thing, and imagine she had the chance of being regarded with any great lenience if she appeared ill.

"Mistress Clorinda begged that you would come quickly," said Rebecca, knocking at the door.

So she caught her handkerchief, which was scented, as all her garments were, with dried rose-leaves from the garden, which she had conserved herself, and went down to the chintz parlour trembling.

It was a great room with white panels, and flowered coverings to the furniture. There were a number of ladies and gentlemen standing talking and laughing loudly together. The men outnumbered the women, and most of them stood in a circle about Mistress Clorinda, who sat upright in a great flowered chair, smiling with her mocking, stately air, as if she defied them to dare to speak what they felt.

Anne came in like a mouse. Nobody saw her. She did not, indeed, know what to do. She dared not remain standing all alone, so she crept to the place where her sister's chair was, and stood a little behind its high back. Her heart beat within her breast till it was like to choke her.

They were only country gentlemen who made the circle, but to her they seemed dashing gallants. That some of them had red noses as well as cheeks, and that their voices were big and their gallantries boisterous, was no drawback to their manly charms, she having seen no other finer gentlemen. They were specimens of the great conquering creature Man, whom all women must aspire to please if they have the fortunate power; and each and all of them were plainly trying to please Clorinda, and not she them.

And so Anne gazed at them with admiring awe, waiting until there should come a pause in which she might presume to call her sister's attention to her presence; but suddenly, before she had indeed made up her mind how she might best announce herself, there spoke behind her a voice of silver.

"It is only goddesses," said the voice, "who waft about them as they move the musk of the rose-gardens of Araby. When you come to reign over us in town, Madam, there will be no perfume in the mode but that of rose-leaves, and in all drawing-rooms we shall breathe but their perfume."

And there, at her side, was bowing, in cinnamon and crimson, with jewelled buttons on his velvet coat, the beautiful being whose fair locks the sun had shone on the morning she had watched him ride away—the man whom the imperial beauty had dismissed and called a popinjay.

Clorinda looked under her lashes towards him without turning, but in so doing beheld Anne standing in waiting.

"A fine speech lost," she said, "though 'twas well enough for the country, Sir John. 'Tis thrown away, because 'tis not I who am scented with rose-leaves, but Anne there, whom you must not ogle. Come hither, sister, and do not hide as if you were ashamed to be looked at."

And she drew her forward, and there Anne stood, and all of them stared at her poor, plain, blushing face, and the Adonis in cinnamon and crimson bowed low, as if she had been a duchess, that being his conqueror's way with gentle or simple, maid, wife, or widow, beauty or homespun uncomeliness.

It was so with him always; he could never resist the chance of luring to himself a woman's heart, whether he wanted it or not, and he had a charm, a strange and wonderful one, it could not be denied. Anne palpitated indeed as she made her curtsey to him, and wondered if Heaven had ever before made so fine a gentleman and so beautiful a being.

She went but seldom to this room again, and when she went she stood always in the background, far more in fear that some one would address her than that she should meet with neglect. She was used to neglect, and to being regarded as a nonentity, and aught else discomfited her. All her pleasure was to hear what was said, though 'twas not always of the finest wit—and to watch Clorinda play the queen among her admirers and her slaves. She would not have dared to speak of Sir John Oxon frequently—indeed, she let fall his name but rarely; but she learned a curious wit in contriving to hear all things concerning him. It was her habit cunningly to lead Mistress Margery to talking about him and relating long histories of his conquests and his grace. Mistress Wimpole knew many of them, having, for a staid and prudent matron, a lively interest in his ways. It seemed, truly—if one must believe her long- winded stories—that no duchess under seventy had escaped weeping for him and losing rest, and that ladies of all ranks had committed follies for his sake.

Mistress Anne, having led her to this fruitful subject, would sit and listen, bending over her embroidery frame with strange emotions, causing her virgin breast to ache with their swelling. She would lie awake at night thinking in the dark, with her heart beating. Surely, surely there was no other man on earth who was so fitted to Clorinda, and to whom it was so suited that this empress should give her charms. Surely no woman, however beautiful or proud, could dismiss his suit when he pressed it. And then, poor woman, her imagination strove to paint the splendour of their mutual love, though of such love she knew so little. But it must, in sooth, be bliss and rapture; and perchance, was her humble thought, she might see it from afar, and hear of it. And when they went to court, and Clorinda had a great mansion in town, and many servants who needed a housewife's eye upon their doings to restrain them from wastefulness and riot, might it not chance to be that if she served well now, and had the courage to plead with her then, she might be permitted to serve her there, living quite apart in some quiet corner of the house. And then her wild thoughts would go so far that she would dream—reddening at her own boldness—of a child who might be born to them, a lordly infant son and heir, whose eyes might be blue and winning, and his hair in great fair locks, and whom she might nurse and tend and be a slave to—and love—and love—and love, and who might end by knowing she was his tender servant, always to be counted on, and might look at her with that wooing, laughing glance, and even love her too.

The night Clorinda laid her commands upon Mistress Wimpole concerning the coming of Sir John Oxon, that matron, after receiving them, hurried to her other charges, flurried and full of talk, and poured forth her wonder and admiration at length.

"She is a wondrous lady!" she said—"she is indeed! It is not alone her beauty, but her spirit and her wit. Mark you how she sees all things and lets none pass, and can lay a plan as prudent as any lady old enough to be twice her mother. She knows all the ways of the world of fashion, and will guard herself against gossip in such a way that none can gainsay her high virtue. Her spirit is too great to allow that she may even seem to be as the town ladies. She will not have it! Sir John will not find his court easy to pay. She will not allow that he shall be able to say to any one that he has seen her alone a moment. Thus, she says, he cannot boast. If all ladies were as wise and cunning, there would be no tales to tell." She talked long and garrulously, and set forth to them how Mistress Clorinda had looked straight at her with her black eyes, until she had almost shaken as she sat, because it seemed as though she dared her to disobey her will; and how she had sat with her hair trailing upon the floor over the chair's back, and at first it had seemed that she was flushed with anger, but next as if she had smiled.

"Betimes," said Mistress Wimpole, "I am afraid when she smiles, but to- night some thought had crossed her mind that pleased her. I think it was that she liked to think that he who has conquered so many ladies will find that he is to be outwitted and made a mock of. She likes that others shall be beaten if she thinks them impudent. She liked it as a child, and would flog the stable-boys with her little whip until they knelt to beg her pardon for their freedoms."

That night Mistress Anne went to her bed-chamber with her head full of wandering thoughts, and she had not the power to bid them disperse themselves and leave her—indeed, she scarce wished for it. She was thinking of Clorinda, and wondering sadly that she was of so high a pride that she could bear herself as though there were no human weakness in her breast, not even the womanly weakness of a heart. How could it be possible that she could treat with disdain this gallant gentleman, if he loved her, as he surely must? Herself she had been sure that she had seen an ardent flame in his blue eyes, even that first day when he had bowed to her with that air of grace as he spoke of the fragrance of the rose leaves he had thought wafted from her robe. How could a woman whom he loved resist him? How could she cause him to suffer by forcing him to stand at arm's length when he sighed to draw near and breathe his passion at her feet?

In the silence of her chamber as she disrobed, she sighed with restless pain, but did not know that her sighing was for grief that love—of which there seemed so little in some lives—could be wasted and flung away. She could not fall into slumber when she lay down upon her pillow, but tossed from side to side with a burdened heart.

"She is so young and beautiful and proud," she thought. "It is because I am so much older that I can see these things—that I see that this is surely the one man who should be her husband. There may be many others, but they are none of them her equals, and she would scorn and hate them when she was once bound to them for life. This one is as beautiful as she—and full of grace, and wit, and spirit. She could not look down upon him, however wrath she was at any time. Ah me! She should not spurn him, surely she should not!"

She was so restless and ill at ease that she could not lie upon her bed, but rose therefrom, as she often did in her wakeful hours, and went to her lattice, gently opening it to look out upon the night, and calm herself by sitting with her face uplifted to the stars, which from her childhood she had fancied looked down upon her kindly and as if they would give her comfort.

To-night there were no stars. There should have been a moon three-quarters full, but, in the evening, clouds had drifted across the sky and closed over all heavily, so that no moonlight was to be seen, save when a rare sudden gust made a ragged rent, for a moment, in the blackness.

She did not sit this time, but knelt, clad in her night-rail as she was. All was sunk into the profoundest silence of the night. By this time the entire household had been long enough abed to be plunged in sleep. She alone was waking, and being of that simple mind which, like a child's, must ever bear its trouble to a protecting strength, she looked up at the darkness of the cloudy sky and prayed for the better fortune of the man who had indeed not remembered her existence after the moment he had made her his obeisance. She was too plain and sober a creature to be remembered.

"Perchance," she murmured, "he is at this moment also looking at the clouds from his window, because he cannot sleep for thinking that in two days he will be beneath her father's roof and will see her loveliness, and he must needs be contriving within his mind what he will say, if she do but look as if she might regard him with favour, which I pray she will."

From the path below, that moment there rose a slight sound, so slight a one that for a moment she thought she must have been deceived in believing it had fallen upon her ear. All was still after it for full two minutes, and had she heard no more she would have surely forgotten she had heard aught, or would have believed herself but the victim of fancy. But after the long pause the same sound came again, though this time it was slighter; yet, despite its slightness, it seemed to her to be the crushing of the earth and stone beneath a cautious foot. It was a foot so cautious that it was surely stealthy and scarce dared to advance at all. And then all was still again. She was for a moment overcome with fears, not being of a courageous temper, and having heard, but of late, of a bold gipsy vagabond who, with a companion, had broken into the lower rooms of a house of the neighbourhood, and being surprised by its owner, had only been overcome and captured after a desperate fight, in which shots were exchanged, and one of the hurriedly-awakened servants killed. So she leaned forward to hearken further, wondering what she should do to best alarm the house, and, as she bent so, she heard the sound again and a smothered oath, and with her straining eyes saw that surely upon the path there stood a dark-draped figure. She rose with great care to her feet, and stood a moment shaking and clinging to the window-ledge, while she bethought her of what servants she could wake first, and how she could reach her father's room. Her poor heart beat in her side, and her breath came quickly. The soundlessness of the night was broken by one of the strange sudden gusts of wind which tossed the trees, and tore at the clouds as they hurried. She heard the footsteps again, as if it feared its own sound the less when the wind might cover it. A faint pale gleam showed between two dark clouds behind which the moon had been hidden; it grew brighter, and a jagged rent was torn, so that the moon herself for a second or so shone out dazzling bright before the clouds rushed over her again and shut her in.

It was at this very instant Mistress Anne heard the footsteps once more, and saw full well a figure in dark cloak and hat which stepped quickly into the shade of a great tree. But more she saw—and clapped her hand upon her mouth to stifle the cry that would have otherwise risen in spite of her—that notwithstanding his fair locks were thrust out of sight beneath his hat, and he looked strange and almost uncomely, it was the face of Sir John Oxon, the moon, bursting through the jagged clouds, had shone upon.



CHAPTER VIII—Two meet in the deserted rose garden, and the old Earl of Dunstanwolde is made a happy man

It was not until three days later, instead of two, that Sir John Oxon rode into the courtyard with his servant behind him. He had been detained on his journey, but looked as if his impatience had not caused him to suffer, for he wore his finest air of spirit and beauty, and when he was alone with Sir Jeoffry, made his compliments to the absent ladies, and inquired of their health with his best town grace.

Mistress Clorinda did not appear until the dining hour, when she swept into the room like a queen, followed by her sister, Anne, and Mistress Wimpole, this being the first occasion of Mistress Anne's dining, as it were, in state with her family.

The honour had so alarmed her, that she looked pale, and so ugly that Sir Jeoffry scowled at sight of her, and swore under his breath to Clorinda that she should have been allowed to come.

"I know my own affairs the best, by your leave, sir," answered Clorinda, as low and with a grand flash of her eye. "She hath been drilled well."

This she had indeed, and so had Mistress Wimpole, and throughout Sir John Oxon's stay they were called upon to see that they played well their parts. Two weeks he stayed and then rode gaily back to town, and when Clorinda made her sweeping curtsey to the ground to him upon the threshold of the flowered room in which he bade her farewell, both Anne and Mistress Wimpole curtseyed a step behind her.

"Now that he has gone and you have shown me that you can attend me as I wish," she said, turning to them as the sound of his horse's hoofs died away, "it will not trouble me should he choose some day to come again. He has not carried with him much that he can boast of."

In truth, it seemed to the outer world that she had held him well in hand. If he had come as a sighing lover, the whole county knew she had shown him but small favour. She had invited companies to the house on several occasions, and all could see how she bore herself towards him. She carried herself with a certain proud courtesy as becoming the daughter of his host, but her wit did not spare him, and sometimes when it was more than in common cutting he was seen to wince though he held himself gallantly. There were one or two who thought they now and then had seen his blue eyes fall upon her when he believed none were looking, and rest there burningly for a moment, but 'twas never for more than an instant, when he would rouse himself with a start and turn away.

She had been for a month or two less given to passionate outbreaks, having indeed decided that it was to her interest as a young lady and a future great one to curb herself. Her tirewoman, Rebecca, had begun to dare to breathe more freely when she was engaged about her person, and had, in truth, spoken of her pleasanter fortune among her fellows in the servants' hall.

But a night or two after the visitor took his departure, she gave way to such an outburst as even Rebecca had scarce ever beheld, being roused to it by a small thing in one sense, though in yet another perhaps great enough, since it touched upon the despoiling of one of her beauties.

She was at her toilet-table being prepared for the night, and her long hair brushed and dressed before retiring. Mistress Wimpole had come in to the chamber to do something at her bidding, and chancing to stand gazing at her great and heavy fall of locks as she was waiting, she observed a thing which caused her, foolish woman that she was, to give a start and utter an unwise exclamation.

"Madam!" she gasped—"madam!"

"What then!" quoth Mistress Clorinda angrily. "You bring my heart to my throat!"

"Your hair!" stammered Wimpole, losing all her small wit—"your beauteous hair! A lock is gone, madam!"

Clorinda started to her feet, and flung the great black mass over her white shoulder, that she might see it in the glass.

"Gone!" she cried. "Where? How? What mean you? Ah-h!"

Her voice rose to a sound that was well-nigh a scream. She saw the rifled spot—a place where a great lock had been severed jaggedly—and it must have been five feet long.

She turned and sprang upon her woman, her beautiful face distorted with fury, and her eyes like flames of fire. She seized her by each shoulder and boxed her ears until her head spun round and bells rang within it.

"'Twas you!" she shrieked. "'Twas you—she-devil-beast—slut that you are! 'Twas when you used your scissors to the new head you made for me. You set it on my hair that you might set a loop—and in your sluttish way you snipped a lock by accident and hid it from me."

She beat her till her own black hair flew about her like the mane of a fury; and having used her hands till they were tired, she took her brush from the table and beat her with that till the room echoed with the blows on the stout shoulders.

"Mistress, 'twas not so!" cried the poor thing, sobbing and struggling. "'Twas not so, madam!"

"Madam, you will kill the woman," wept Mistress Wimpole. "I beseech you—! 'Tis not seemly, I beseech—"

Mistress Clorinda flung her woman from her and threw the brush at Mistress Wimpole, crying at her with the lordly rage she had been wont to shriek with when she wore breeches.

"Damnation to thy seemliness!" she cried, "and to thee too! Get thee gone—from me, both—get thee gone from my sight!"

And both women fled weeping, and sobbing, and gasping from the room incontinently.

She was shrewish and sullen with her woman for days after, and it was the poor creature's labour to keep from her sight, when she dressed her head, the place from whence the lock had been taken. In the servants' hall the woman vowed that it was not she who had cut it, that she had had no accident, though it was true she had used the scissors about her head, yet it was but in snipping a ribbon, and she had not touched a hair.

"If she were another lady," she said, "I should swear some gallant had robbed her of it; but, forsooth, she does not allow them to come near enough for such sport, and with five feet of hair wound up in coronals, how could a man unwind a lock, even if 'twas permitted him to stand at her very side."

Two years passed, and the beauty had no greater fields to conquer than those she found in the country, since her father, Sir Jeoffry, had not the money to take her to town, he becoming more and more involved and so fallen into debt that it was even whispered that at times it went hard with him to keep even the poor household he had.

Mistress Clorinda's fortunes the gentry of the neighbourhood discussed with growing interest and curiosity. What was like to become of her great gifts and powers in the end, if she could never show them to the great world, and have the chance to carry her splendid wares to the fashionable market where there were men of quality and wealth who would be like to bid for them. She had not chosen to accept any of those who had offered themselves so far, and it was believed that for some reason she had held off my lord of Dunstanwolde in his suit. 'Twas evident that he admired her greatly, and why he had not already made her his countess was a sort of mystery which was productive of many discussions and bore much talking over. Some said that, with all her beauty and his admiration, he was wary and waited, and some were pleased to say that the reason he waited was because the young lady herself contrived that he should, it being her desire to make an open conquest of Sir John Oxon, and show him to the world as her slave, before she made up her mind to make even a much greater match. Some hinted that for all her disdainfulness and haughty pride she would marry Sir John if he asked her, but that he being as brilliant a beau as she a beauty, he was too fond of his pleasures and his gay town life to give them up even to a goddess who had no fortune. His own had not been a great one, and he had squandered it magnificently, his extravagances being renowned in the world of fashion, and having indeed founded for him his reputation.

It was, however, still his way to accept frequent hospitalities from his kinsman Eldershawe, and Sir Jeoffry was always rejoiced enough to secure him as his companion for a few days when he could lure him from the dissipation of the town. At such times it never failed that Mistress Wimpole and poor Anne kept their guard. Clorinda never allowed them to relax their vigilance, and Mistress Wimpole ceased to feel afraid, and became accustomed to her duties, but Anne never did so. She looked always her palest and ugliest when Sir John was in the house, and she would glance with sad wonder and timid adoration from him to Clorinda; but sometimes when she looked at Sir John her plain face would grow crimson, and once or twice he caught her at the folly, and when she dropped her eyes overwhelmed with shame, he faintly smiled to himself, seeing in her a new though humble conquest.

There came a day when in the hunting-field there passed from mouth to mouth a rumour, and Sir Jeoffry, hearing it, came pounding over on his big black horse to his daughter and told it to her in great spirits.

"He is a sly dog, John Oxon," he said, a broad grin on his rubicund face. "This very week he comes to us, and he and I are cronies, yet he has blabbed nothing of what is being buzzed about by all the world."

"He has learned how to keep a closed mouth," said Mistress Clorinda, without asking a question.

"But 'tis marriage he is so mum about, bless ye!" said Sir Jeoffry. "And that is not a thing to be hid long. He is to be shortly married, they say. My lady, his mother, has found him a great fortune in a new beauty but just come to town. She hath great estates in the West Indies, as well as a fine fortune in England—and all the world is besieging her; but Jack hath come and bowed sighing before her, and writ some verses, and borne her off from them all."

"'Tis time," said Clorinda, "that he should marry some woman who can pay his debts and keep him out of the spunging house, for to that he will come if he does not play his cards with skill."

Sir Jeoffry looked at her askance and rubbed his red chin.

"I wish thou hadst liked him, Clo," he said, "and ye had both had fortunes to match. I love the fellow, and ye would have made a handsome pair."

Mistress Clorinda laughed, sitting straight in her saddle, her fine eyes unblenching, though the sun struck them.

"We had fortunes to match," she said—"I was a beggar and he was a spendthrift. Here comes Lord Dunstanwolde."

And as the gentleman rode near, it seemed to his dazzled eyes that the sun so shone down upon her because she was a goddess and drew it from the heavens.

In the west wing of the Hall 'twas talked of between Mistress Wimpole and her charges, that a rumour of Sir John Oxon's marriage was afloat.

"Yet can I not believe it," said Mistress Margery; "for if ever a gentleman was deep in love, though he bitterly strove to hide it, 'twas Sir John, and with Mistress Clorinda."

"But she," faltered Anne, looking pale and even agitated—"she was always disdainful to him and held him at arm's length. I—I wished she would have treated him more kindly."

"'Tis not her way to treat men kindly," said Mistress Wimpole.

But whether the rumour was true or false—and there were those who bestowed no credit upon it, and said it was mere town talk, and that the same things had been bruited abroad before—it so chanced that Sir John paid no visit to his relative or to Sir Jeoffry for several months. 'Twas heard once that he had gone to France, and at the French Court was making as great a figure as he had made at the English one, but of this even his kinsman Lord Eldershawe could speak no more certainly than he could of the first matter.

The suit of my Lord of Dunstanwolde—if suit it was—during these months appeared to advance somewhat. All orders of surmises were made concerning it—that Mistress Clorinda had privately quarrelled with Sir John and sent him packing; that he had tired of his love-making, as 'twas well known he had done many times before, and having squandered his possessions and finding himself in open straits, must needs patch up his fortunes in a hurry with the first heiress whose estate suited him. But 'twas the women who said these things; the men swore that no man could tire of or desert such spirit and beauty, and that if Sir John Oxon stayed away 'twas because he had been commanded to do so, it never having been Mistress Clorinda's intention to do more than play with him awhile, she having been witty against him always for a fop, and meaning herself to accept no man as a husband who could not give her both rank and wealth.

"We know her," said the old boon companions of her childhood, as they talked of her over their bottles. "She knew her price and would bargain for it when she was not eight years old, and would give us songs and kisses but when she was paid for them with sweet things and knickknacks from the toy-shops. She will marry no man who cannot make her at least a countess, and she would take him but because there was not a duke at hand. We know her, and her beauty's ways."

But they did not know her; none knew her, save herself.

In the west wing, which grew more bare and ill-furnished as things wore out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler. She was so thin in two months' time, that her soft, dull eyes looked twice their natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people. One day, indeed, as she sat at work in her sister's room, Clorinda being there at the time, the beauty, turning and beholding her face suddenly, uttered a violent exclamation.

"Why look you at me so?" she said. "Your eyes stand out of your head like a new-hatched, unfeathered bird's. They irk me with their strange asking look. Why do you stare at me?"

"I do not know," Anne faltered. "I could not tell you, sister. My eyes seem to stare so because of my thinness. I have seen them in my mirror."

"Why do you grow thin?" quoth Clorinda harshly. "You are not ill."

"I—I do not know," again Anne faltered. "Naught ails me. I do not know. For—forgive me!"

Clorinda laughed.

"Soft little fool," she said, "why should you ask me to forgive you? I might as fairly ask you to forgive me, that I keep my shape and show no wasting."

Anne rose from her chair and hurried to her sister's side, sinking upon her knees there to kiss her hand.

"Sister," she said, "one could never dream that you could need pardon. I love you so—that all you do, it seems to me must be right—whatsoever it might be."

Clorinda drew her fair hands away and clasped them on the top of her head, proudly, as if she crowned herself thereby, her great and splendid eyes setting themselves upon her sister's face.

"All that I do," she said slowly, and with the steadfast high arrogance of an empress' self—"All that I do is right—for me. I make it so by doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women crouch and whine before, because they dare not break them, though they long to do so? I am my own law—and the law of some others."

It was by this time the first month of the summer, and to-night there was again a birth-night ball, at which the beauty was to dazzle all eyes; but 'twas of greater import than the one she had graced previously, it being to celebrate the majority of the heir to an old name and estate, who had been orphaned early, and was highly connected, counting, indeed, among the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the first time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again.

He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late. But there was one who had seen him early, though no human soul had known of the event.

In the rambling, ill-cared for grounds of Wildairs Hall there was an old rose-garden, which had once been the pride and pleasure of some lady of the house, though this had been long ago; and now it was but a lonely wilderness where roses only grew because the dead Lady Wildairs had loved them, and Barbara and Anne had tended them, and with their own hands planted and pruned during their childhood and young maiden days. But of late years even they had seemed to have forgotten it, having become discouraged, perchance, having no gardeners to do the rougher work, and the weeds and brambles so running riot. There were high hedges and winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and it was a beauteous place deserted.

In the centre was an ancient broken sun-dial, which was in these days in the midst of a sort of thicket, where a bold tangle of the finest red roses clambered, and, defying neglect, flaunted their rich colour in the sun.

And though the place had been so long forgotten, and it was not the custom for it to be visited, about this garlanded broken sun-dial the grass was a little trodden, and on the morning of the young heir's coming of age some one stood there in the glowing sunlight as if waiting.

This was no less than Mistress Clorinda herself. She was clad in a morning gown of white, which seemed to make of her more than ever a tall, transcendent creature, less a woman than a conquering goddess; and she had piled the dial with scarlet red roses, which she was choosing to weave into a massive wreath or crown, for some purpose best known to herself. Her head seemed haughtier and more splendidly held on high even than was its common wont, but upon these roses her lustrous eyes were downcast and were curiously smiling, as also was her ripe, arching lip, whose scarlet the blossoms vied with but poorly. It was a smile like this, perhaps, which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for 'twas not a tender smile nor a melting one. If she was waiting, she did not wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had been kept by any daring laggard. This was not her way.

'Twas not a laggard who came soon, stepping hurriedly with light feet upon the grass, as though he feared the sound which might be made if he had trodden upon the gravel. It was Sir John Oxon who came towards her in his riding costume.

He came and stood before her on the other side of the dial, and made her a bow so low that a quick eye might have thought 'twas almost mocking. His feather, sweeping the ground, caught a fallen rose, which clung to it. His beauty, when he stood upright, seemed to defy the very morning's self and all the morning world; but Mistress Clorinda did not lift her eyes, but kept them upon her roses, and went on weaving.

"Why did you choose to come?" she asked.

"Why did you choose to keep the tryst in answer to my message?" he replied to her.

At this she lifted her great shining eyes and fixed them full upon him.

"I wished," she said, "to hear what you would say—but more to see you than to hear."

"And I," he began—"I came—"

She held up her white hand with a long-stemmed rose in it—as though a queen should lift a sceptre.

"You came," she answered, "more to see me than to hear. You made that blunder."

"You choose to bear yourself like a goddess, and disdain me from Olympian heights," he said. "I had the wit to guess it would be so."

She shook her royal head, faintly and most strangely smiling.

"That you had not," was her clear-worded answer. "That is a later thought sprung up since you have seen my face. 'Twas quick—for you—but not quick enough." And the smile in her eyes was maddening. "You thought to see a woman crushed and weeping, her beauty bent before you, her locks dishevelled, her streaming eyes lifted to Heaven—and you—with prayers, swearing that not Heaven could help her so much as your deigning magnanimity. You have seen women do this before, you would have seen me do it—at your feet—crying out that I was lost—lost for ever. That you expected! 'Tis not here."

Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or conscience—for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of rakes and fashionable villains—well as he thought he knew all women and their ways, betraying or betrayed—this creature taught him a new thing, a new mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like a thunderbolt.

"Gods!" he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back apace, "Damnation! you are not a woman!"

She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes should loose themselves from hers.

"But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights," she said; "I am not one—I am a woman who would show other women how to bear themselves in hours like these. Because I am a woman why should I kneel, and weep, and rave? What have I lost—in losing you? I should have lost the same had I been twice your wife. What is it women weep and beat their breasts for—because they love a man—because they lose his love. They never have them."

She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it. What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so—a heavy, sumptuous thing—in her white hands, her head thrown backward.

"You marry soon," she asked—"if the match is not broken?"

"Yes," he answered, watching her—a flame growing in his eyes and in his soul in his own despite.

"It cannot be too soon," she said. And she turned and faced him, holding the wreath high in her two hands poised like a crown above her head—the brilliant sun embracing her, her lips curling, her face uplifted as if she turned to defy the light, the crimson of her cheek. 'Twas as if from foot to brow the woman's whole person was a flame, rising and burning triumphant high above him. Thus for one second's space she stood, dazzling his very eyesight with her strange, dauntless splendour; and then she set the great rose-wreath upon her head, so crowning it.

"You came to see me," she said, the spark in her eyes growing to the size of a star; "I bid you look at me—and see how grief has faded me these past months, and how I am bowed down by it. Look well—that you may remember."

"I look," he said, almost panting.

"Then," she said, her fine-cut nostril pinching itself with her breath, as she pointed down the path before her—"go!—back to your kennel!"

* * * * *

That night she appeared at the birth-night ball with the wreath of roses on her head. No other ladies wore such things, 'twas a fashion of her own; but she wore it in such beauty and with such state that it became a crown again even as it had been the first moment that she had put it on. All gazed at her as she entered, and a murmur followed her as she moved with her father up the broad oak staircase which was known through all the country for its width and massive beauty. In the hall below guests were crowded, and there were indeed few of them who did not watch her as she mounted by Sir Jeoffry's side. In the upper hall there were guests also, some walking to and fro, some standing talking, many looking down at the arrivals as they came up.

"'Tis Mistress Wildairs," these murmured as they saw her. "Clorinda, by God!" said one of the older men to his crony who stood near him. "And crowned with roses! The vixen makes them look as if they were built of rubies in every leaf."

At the top of the great staircase there stood a gentleman, who had indeed paused a moment, spellbound, as he saw her coming. He was a man of unusual height and of a majestic mien; he wore a fair periwig, which added to his tallness; his laces and embroiderings were marvels of art and richness, and his breast blazed with orders. Strangely, she did not seem to see him; but when she reached the landing, and her face was turned so that he beheld the full blaze of its beauty, 'twas so great a wonder and revelation to him that he gave a start. The next moment almost, one of the red roses of her crown broke loose from its fastenings and fell at his very feet. His countenance changed so that it seemed almost, for a second, to lose some of its colour. He stooped and picked the rose up and held it in his hand. But Mistress Clorinda was looking at my Lord of Dunstanwolde, who was moving through the crowd to greet her. She gave him a brilliant smile, and from her lustrous eyes surely there passed something which lit a fire of hope in his.

After she had made her obeisance to her entertainers, and her birthday greetings to the young heir, he contrived to draw closely to her side and speak a few words in a tone those near her could not hear.

"To-night, madam," he said, with melting fervour, "you deign to bring me my answer as you promised."

"Yes," she murmured. "Take me where we may be a few moments alone."

He led her to an antechamber, where they were sheltered from the gaze of the passers-by, though all was moving gaiety about them. He fell upon his knee and bowed to kiss her fair hand. Despite the sobriety of his years, he was as eager and tender as a boy.

"Be gracious to me, madam," he implored. "I am not young enough to wait. Too many months have been thrown away."

"You need wait no longer, my lord," she said—"not one single hour."

And while he, poor gentleman, knelt, kissing her hand with adoring humbleness, she, under the splendour of her crown of roses, gazed down at his grey-sprinkled head with her great steady shining orbs, as if gazing at some almost uncomprehended piteous wonder.

In less than an hour the whole assemblage knew of the event and talked of it. Young men looked daggers at Dunstanwolde and at each other; and older men wore glum or envious faces. Women told each other 'twas as they had known it would be, or 'twas a wonder that at last it had come about. Upon the arm of her lord that was to be, Mistress Clorinda passed from room to room like a royal bride.

As she made her first turn of the ballroom, all eyes upon her, her beauty blazing at its highest, Sir John Oxon entered and stood at the door. He wore his gallant air, and smiled as ever; and when she drew near him he bowed low, and she stopped, and bent lower in a curtsey sweeping the ground.

'Twas but in the next room her lord led her to a gentleman who stood with a sort of court about him. It was the tall stranger, with the fair periwig, and the orders glittering on his breast—the one who had started at sight of her as she had reached the landing of the stairs. He held still in his hand a broken red rose, and when his eye fell on her crown the colour mounted to his cheek.

"My honoured kinsman, his Grace the Duke of Osmonde," said her affianced lord. "Your Grace—it is this lady who is to do me the great honour of becoming my Lady Dunstanwolde."

And as the deep, tawny brown eye of the man bending before her flashed into her own, for the first time in her life Mistress Clorinda's lids fell, and as she swept her curtsey of stately obeisance her heart struck like a hammer against her side.



CHAPTER IX—"I give to him the thing he craves with all his soul—myself"

In a month she was the Countess of Dunstanwolde, and reigned in her lord's great town house with a retinue of servants, her powdered lackeys among the tallest, her liveries and equipages the richest the world of fashion knew. She was presented at the Court, blazing with the Dunstanwolde jewels, and even with others her bridegroom had bought in his passionate desire to heap upon her the magnificence which became her so well. From the hour she knelt to kiss the hand of royalty she set the town on fire. It seemed to have been ordained by Fate that her passage through this world should be always the triumphant passage of a conqueror. As when a baby she had ruled the servants' hall, the kennel, and the grooms' quarters, later her father and his boisterous friends, and from her fifteenth birthday the whole hunting shire she lived in, so she held her sway in the great world, as did no other lady of her rank or any higher. Those of her age seemed but girls yet by her side, whether married or unmarried, and howsoever trained to modish ways. She was but scarce eighteen at her marriage, but she was no girl, nor did she look one, glowing as was the early splendour of her bloom. Her height was far beyond the ordinary for a woman; but her shape so faultless and her carriage so regal, that though there were men upon whom she was tall enough to look down with ease, the beholder but felt that her tallness was an added grace and beauty with which all women should have been endowed, and which, as they were not, caused them to appear but insignificant. What a throat her diamonds blazed on, what shoulders and bosom her laces framed, on what a brow her coronet sat and glittered. Her lord lived as 'twere upon his knees in enraptured adoration. Since his first wife's death in his youth, he had dwelt almost entirely in the country at his house there, which was fine and stately, but had been kept gloomily half closed for a decade. His town establishment had, in truth, never been opened since his bereavement; and now—an elderly man—he returned to the gay world he had almost forgotten, with a bride whose youth and beauty set it aflame. What wonder that his head almost reeled at times and that he lost his breath before the sum of his strange late bliss, and the new lease of brilliant life which seemed to have been given to him.

In the days when, while in the country, he had heard such rumours of the lawless days of Sir Jeoffry Wildairs' daughter, when he had heard of her dauntless boldness, her shrewish temper, and her violent passions, he had been awed at the thought of what a wife such a woman would make for a gentleman accustomed to a quiet life, and he had indeed striven hard to restrain the desperate admiration he was forced to admit she had inspired in him even at her first ball.

The effort had, in sooth, been in vain, and he had passed many a sleepless night; and when, as time went on, he beheld her again and again, and saw with his own eyes, as well as heard from others, of the great change which seemed to have taken place in her manners and character, he began devoutly to thank Heaven for the alteration, as for a merciful boon vouchsafed to him. He had been wise enough to know that even a stronger man than himself could never conquer or rule her; and when she seemed to begin to rule herself and bear herself as befitted her birth and beauty, he had dared to allow himself to dream of what perchance might be if he had great good fortune.

In these days of her union with him, he was, indeed, almost humbly amazed at the grace and kindness she showed him every hour they passed in each other's company. He knew that there were men, younger and handsomer than himself, who, being wedded to beauties far less triumphant than she, found that their wives had but little time to spare them from the world, which knelt at their feet, and that in some fashion they themselves seemed to fall into the background. But 'twas not so with this woman, powerful and worshipped though she might be. She bore herself with the high dignity of her rank, but rendered to him the gracious respect and deference due both to his position and his merit. She stood by his side and not before him, and her smiles and wit were bestowed upon him as generously as to others. If she had once been a vixen, she was surely so no longer, for he never heard a sharp or harsh word pass her lips, though it is true her manner was always somewhat imperial, and her lacqueys and waiting women stood in greatest awe of her. There was that in her presence and in her eye before which all commoner or weaker creatures quailed. The men of the world who flocked to pay their court to her, and the popinjays who followed them, all knew this look, and a tone in her rich voice which could cut like a knife when she chose that it should do so. But to my Lord of Dunstanwolde she was all that a worshipped lady could be.

"Your ladyship has made of me a happier man than I ever dared to dream of being, even when I was but thirty," he would say to her, with reverent devotion. "I know not what I have done to deserve this late summer which hath been given me."

"When I consented to be your wife," she answered once, "I swore to myself that I would make one for you;" and she crossed the hearth to where he sat—she was attired in all her splendour for a Court ball, and starred with jewels—bent over his chair and placed a kiss upon his grizzled hair.

Upon the night before her wedding with him, her sister, Mistress Anne, had stolen to her chamber at a late hour. When she had knocked upon the door, and had been commanded to enter, she had come in, and closing the door behind her, had stood leaning against it, looking before her, with her eyes wide with agitation and her poor face almost grey.

All the tapers for which places could be found had been gathered together, and the room was a blaze of light. In the midst of it, before her mirror, Clorinda stood attired in her bridal splendour of white satin and flowing rich lace, a diamond crescent on her head, sparks of light flaming from every point of her raiment. When she caught sight of Anne's reflection in the glass before her, she turned and stood staring at her in wonder.

"What—nay, what is this?" she cried. "What do you come for? On my soul, you come for something—or you have gone mad."

Anne started forward, trembling, her hands clasped upon her breast, and fell at her feet with sobs.

"Yes, yes," she gasped, "I came—for something—to speak—to pray you—! Sister—Clorinda, have patience with me—till my courage comes again!" and she clutched her robe.

Something which came nigh to being a shudder passed through Mistress Clorinda's frame; but it was gone in a second, and she touched Anne—though not ungently—with her foot, withdrawing her robe.

"Do not stain it with your tears," she said "'twould be a bad omen."

Anne buried her face in her hands and knelt so before her.

"'Tis not too late!" she said—"'tis not too late yet."

"For what?" Clorinda asked. "For what, I pray you tell me, if you can find your wits. You go beyond my patience with your folly."

"Too late to stop," said Anne—"to draw back and repent."

"What?" commanded Clorinda—"what then should I repent me?"

"This marriage," trembled Mistress Anne, taking her poor hands from her face to wring them. "It should not be."

"Fool!" quoth Clorinda. "Get up and cease your grovelling. Did you come to tell me it was not too late to draw back and refuse to be the Countess of Dunstanwolde?" and she laughed bitterly.

"But it should not be—it must not!" Anne panted. "I—I know, sister, I know—"

Clorinda bent deliberately and laid her strong, jewelled hand on her shoulder with a grasp like a vice. There was no hurry in her movement or in her air, but by sheer, slow strength she forced her head backward so that the terrified woman was staring in her face.

"Look at me," she said. "I would see you well, and be squarely looked at, that my eyes may keep you from going mad. You have pondered over this marriage until you have a frenzy. Women who live alone are sometimes so, and your brain was always weak. What is it that you know. Look—in my eyes—and tell me."

It seemed as if her gaze stabbed through Anne's eyes to the very centre of her brain. Anne tried to bear it, and shrunk and withered; she would have fallen upon the floor at her feet a helpless, sobbing heap, but the white hand would not let her go.

"Find your courage—if you have lost it—and speak plain words," Clorinda commanded. Anne tried to writhe away, but could not again, and burst into passionate, hopeless weeping.

"I cannot—I dare not!" she gasped. "I am afraid. You are right; my brain is weak, and I—but that—that gentleman—who so loved you—"

"Which?" said Clorinda, with a brief scornful laugh.

"The one who was so handsome—with the fair locks and the gallant air—"

"The one you fell in love with and stared at through the window," said Clorinda, with her brief laugh again. "John Oxon! He has victims enough, forsooth, to have spared such an one as you are."

"But he loved you!" cried Anne piteously, "and it must have been that you—you too, sister—or—or else—" She choked again with sobs, and Clorinda released her grasp upon her shoulder and stood upright.

"He wants none of me—nor I of him," she said, with strange sternness. "We have done with one another. Get up upon your feet if you would not have me thrust you out into the corridor."

She turned from her, and walking back to her dressing-table, stood there steadying the diadem on her hair, which had loosed a fastening when Anne tried to writhe away from her. Anne half sat, half knelt upon the floor, staring at her with wet, wild eyes of misery and fear.

"Leave your kneeling," commanded her sister again, "and come here."

Anne staggered to her feet and obeyed her behest. In the glass she could see the resplendent reflection; but Clorinda did not deign to turn towards her while she addressed her, changing the while the brilliants in her hair.

"Hark you, sister Anne," she said. "I read you better than you think. You are a poor thing, but you love me and—in my fashion—I think I love you somewhat too. You think I should not marry a gentleman whom you fancy I do not love as I might a younger, handsomer man. You are full of love, and spinster dreams of it which make you flighty. I love my Lord of Dunstanwolde as well as any other man, and better than some, for I do not hate him. He has a fine estate, and is a gentleman—and worships me. Since I have been promised to him, I own I have for a moment seen another gentleman who might—but 'twas but for a moment, and 'tis done with. 'Twas too late then. If we had met two years agone 'twould not have been so. My Lord Dunstanwolde gives to me wealth, and rank, and life at Court. I give to him the thing he craves with all his soul—myself. It is an honest bargain, and I shall bear my part of it with honesty. I have no virtues—where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women's virtues; but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man's. 'Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when 'tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. 'Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly, and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will not cheat him as weaker women do their husbands; for he pays—poor gentleman—he pays."

And then, still looking at the glass, she pointed to the doorway through which her sister had come, and in obedience to her gesture of command, Mistress Anne stole silently away.



CHAPTER X—"Yes—I have marked him"

Through the brilliant, happy year succeeding to his marriage my Lord of Dunstanwolde lived like a man who dreams a blissful dream and knows it is one.

"I feel," he said to his lady, "as if 'twere too great rapture to last, and yet what end could come, unless you ceased to be kind to me; and, in truth, I feel that you are too noble above all other women to change, unless I were more unworthy than I could ever be since you are mine."

Both in the town and in the country, which last place heard many things of his condition and estate through rumour, he was the man most wondered at and envied of his time—envied because of his strange happiness; wondered at because having, when long past youth, borne off this arrogant beauty from all other aspirants she showed no arrogance to him, and was as perfect a wife as could have been some woman without gifts whom he had lifted from low estate and endowed with rank and fortune. She seemed both to respect himself and her position as his lady and spouse. Her manner of reigning in his household was among his many delights the greatest. It was a great house, and an old one, built long before by a Dunstanwolde whose lavish feasts and riotous banquets had been the notable feature of his life. It was curiously rambling in its structure. The rooms of entertainment were large and splendid, the halls and staircases stately; below stairs there was space for an army of servants to be disposed of; and its network of cellars and wine-vaults was so beyond all need that more than one long arched stone passage was shut up as being without use, and but letting cold, damp air into corridors leading to the servants' quarters. It was, indeed, my Lady Dunstanwolde who had ordered the closing of this part when it had been her pleasure to be shown her domain by her housekeeper, the which had greatly awed and impressed her household as signifying that, exalted lady as she was, her wit was practical as well as brilliant, and that her eyes being open to her surroundings, she meant not that her lacqueys should rob her and her scullions filch, thinking that she was so high that she was ignorant of common things and blind.

"You will be well housed and fed and paid your dues," she said to them; "but the first man or woman who does a task ill or dishonestly will be turned from his place that hour. I deal justice—not mercy."

"Such a mistress they have never had before," said my lord when she related this to him. "Nay, they have never dreamed of such a lady—one who can be at once so severe and so kind. But there is none other such, my dearest one. They will fear and worship you."

She gave him one of her sweet, splendid smiles. It was the sweetness she at rare times gave her splendid smile which was her marvellous power.

"I would not be too grand a lady to be a good housewife," she said. "I may not order your dinners, my dear lord, or sweep your corridors, but they shall know I rule your household and would rule it well."

"You are a goddess!" he cried, kneeling to her, enraptured. "And you have given yourself to a poor mortal man, who can but worship you."

"You give me all I have," she said, "and you love me nobly, and I am grateful."

Her assemblies were the most brilliant in the town, and the most to be desired entrance to. Wits and beauties planned and intrigued that they might be bidden to her house; beaux and fine ladies fell into the spleen if she neglected them. Her lord's kinsman the Duke of Osmonde, who had been present when she first knelt to Royalty, had scarce removed his eyes from her so long as he could gaze. He went to Dunstanwolde afterwards and congratulated him with stately courtesy upon his great good fortune and happiness, speaking almost with fire of her beauty and majesty, and thanking his kinsman that through him such perfections had been given to their name and house. From that time, at all special assemblies given by his kinsman he was present, the observed of all observers. He was a man of whom 'twas said that he was the most magnificent gentleman in Europe; that there was none to compare with him in the combination of gifts given both by Nature and Fortune. His beauty both of feature and carriage was of the greatest, his mind was of the highest, and his education far beyond that of the age he lived in. It was not the fashion of the day that men of his rank should devote themselves to the cultivation of their intellects instead of to a life of pleasure; but this he had done from his earliest youth, and now, in his perfect though early maturity, he had no equal in polished knowledge and charm of bearing. He was the patron of literature and art; men of genius were not kept waiting in his antechamber, but were received by him with courtesy and honour. At the Court 'twas well known there was no man who stood so near the throne in favour, and that there was no union so exalted that he might not have made his suit as rather that of a superior than an equal. The Queen both loved and honoured him, and condescended to avow as much with gracious frankness. She knew no other man, she deigned to say, who was so worthy of honour and affection, and that he had not married must be because there was no woman who could meet him on ground that was equal. If there were no scandals about him—and there were none—'twas not because he was cold of heart or imagination. No man or woman could look into his deep eye and not know that when love came to him 'twould be a burning passion, and an evil fate if it went ill instead of happily.

"Being past his callow, youthful days, 'tis time he made some woman a duchess," Dunstanwolde said reflectively once to his wife. "'Twould be more fitting that he should; and it is his way to honour his house in all things, and bear himself without fault as the head of it. Methinks it strange he makes no move to do it."

"No, 'tis not strange," said my lady, looking under her black-fringed lids at the glow of the fire, as though reflecting also. "There is no strangeness in it."

"Why not?" her lord asked.

"There is no mate for him," she answered slowly. "A man like him must mate as well as marry, or he will break his heart with silent raging at the weakness of the thing he is tied to. He is too strong and splendid for a common woman. If he married one, 'twould be as if a lion had taken to himself for mate a jackal or a sheep. Ah!" with a long drawn breath—"he would go mad—mad with misery;" and her hands, which lay upon her knee, wrung themselves hard together, though none could see it.

"He should have a goddess, were they not so rare," said Dunstanwolde, gently smiling. "He should hold a bitter grudge against me, that I, his unworthy kinsman, have been given the only one."

"Yes, he should have a goddess," said my lady slowly again; "and there are but women, naught but women."

"You have marked him well," said her lord, admiring her wisdom. "Methinks that you—though you have spoken to him but little, and have but of late become his kinswoman—have marked and read him better than the rest of us."

"Yes—I have marked him," was her answer.

"He is a man to mark, and I have a keen eye." She rose up as she spoke, and stood before the fire, lifted by some strong feeling to her fullest height, and towering there, splendid in the shadow—for 'twas by twilight they talked. "He is a Man," she said—"he is a Man! Nay, he is as God meant man should be. And if men were so, there would be women great enough for them to mate with and to give the world men like them." And but that she stood in the shadow, her lord would have seen the crimson torrent rush up her cheek and brow, and overspread her long round throat itself.

If none other had known of it, there was one man who knew that she had marked him, though she had borne herself towards him always with her stateliest grace. This man was his Grace the Duke himself. From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her wreath at his feet, and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he had seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that had he not come but just too late, she would have been his own. Each time he had beheld her since that night he had felt this burn more deeply in his soul. He was too high and fine in all his thoughts to say to himself that in her he saw for the first time the woman who was his peer; but this was very truth—or might have been, if Fate had set her youth elsewhere, and a lady who was noble and her own mother had trained and guarded her. When he saw her at the Court surrounded, as she ever was, by a court of her own; when he saw her reigning in her lord's house, receiving and doing gracious honour to his guests and hers; when she passed him in her coach, drawing every eye by the majesty of her presence, as she drove through the town, he felt a deep pang, which was all the greater that his honour bade him conquer it. He had no ignoble thought of her, he would have scorned to sully his soul with any light passion; to him she was the woman who might have been his beloved wife and duchess, who would have upheld with him the honour and traditions of his house, whose strength and power and beauty would have been handed down to his children, who so would have been born endowed with gifts befitting the state to which Heaven had called them. It was of this he thought when he saw her, and of naught less like to do her honour. And as he had marked her so, he saw in her eyes, despite her dignity and grace, she had marked him. He did not know how closely, or that she gave him the attention he could not restrain himself from bestowing upon her. But when he bowed before her, and she greeted him with all courtesy, he saw in her great, splendid eye that had Fate willed it so, she would have understood all his thoughts, shared all his ambitions, and aided him to uphold his high ideals. Nay, he knew she understood him even now, and was stirred by what stirred him also, even though they met but rarely, and when they encountered each other, spoke but as kinsman and kinswoman who would show each other all gracious respect and honour. It was because of this pang which struck his great heart at times that he was not a frequent visitor at my Lord Dunstanwolde's mansion, but appeared there only at such assemblies as were matters of ceremony, his absence from which would have been a noted thing. His kinsman was fond of him, and though himself of so much riper age, honoured him greatly. At times he strove to lure him into visits of greater familiarity; but though his kindness was never met coldly or repulsed, a further intimacy was in some gracious way avoided.

"My lady must beguile you to be less formal with us," said Dunstanwolde. And later her ladyship spoke as her husband had privately desired: "My lord would be made greatly happy if your Grace would honour our house oftener," she said one night, when at the end of a great ball he was bidding her adieu.

Osmonde's deep eye met hers gently and held it. "My Lord Dunstanwolde is always gracious and warm of heart to his kinsman," he replied. "Do not let him think me discourteous or ungrateful. In truth, your ladyship, I am neither the one nor the other."

The eyes of each gazed into the other's steadfastly and gravely. The Duke of Osmonde thought of Juno's as he looked at hers; they were of such velvet, and held such fathomless deeps.

"Your Grace is not so free as lesser men," Clorinda said. "You cannot come and go as you would."

"No," he answered gravely, "I cannot, as I would."

And this was all.

It having been known by all the world that, despite her beauty and her conquests, Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had not smiled with great favour upon Sir John Oxon in the country, it was not wondered at or made any matter of gossip that the Countess of Dunstanwolde was but little familiar with him and saw him but rarely at her house in town.

Once or twice he had appeared there, it is true, at my Lord Dunstanwolde's instance, but my lady herself scarce seemed to see him after her first courtesies as hostess were over.

"You never smiled on him, my love," Dunstanwolde said to his wife. "You bore yourself towards him but cavalierly, as was your ladyship's way—with all but one poor servant," tenderly; "but he was one of the many who followed in your train, and if these gay young fellows stay away, 'twill be said that I keep them at a distance because I am afraid of their youth and gallantry. I would not have it fancied that I was so ungrateful as to presume upon your goodness and not leave to you your freedom."

"Nor would I, my lord," she answered. "But he will not come often; I do not love him well enough."

His marriage with the heiress who had wealth in the West Indies was broken off, or rather 'twas said had come to naught. All the town knew it, and wondered, and talked, because it had been believed at first that the young lady was much enamoured of him, and that he would soon lead her to the altar, the which his creditors had greatly rejoiced over as promising them some hope that her fortune would pay their bills of which they had been in despair. Later, however, gossip said that the heiress had not been so tender as was thought; that, indeed, she had been found to be in love with another man, and that even had she not, she had heard such stories of Sir John as promised but little nuptial happiness for any woman that took him to husband.

When my Lord Dunstanwolde brought his bride to town, and she soared at once to splendid triumph and renown, inflaming every heart, and setting every tongue at work, clamouring her praises, Sir John Oxon saw her from afar in all the scenes of brilliant fashion she frequented and reigned queen of. 'Twas from afar, it might be said, he saw her only, though he was often near her, because she bore herself as if she did not observe him, or as though he were a thing which did not exist. The first time that she deigned to address him was upon an occasion when she found herself standing so near him at an assembly that in the crowd she brushed him with her robe. His blue eyes were fixed burningly upon her, and as she brushed him he drew in a hard breath, which she hearing, turned slowly and let her own eyes fall upon his face.

"You did not marry," she said.

"No, I did not marry," he answered, in a low, bitter voice. "'Twas your ladyship who did that."

She faintly, slowly smiled.

"I should not have been like to do otherwise," she said; "'tis an honourable condition. I would advise you to enter it."



CHAPTER XI—Wherein a noble life comes to an end

When the earl and his countess went to their house in the country, there fell to Mistress Anne a great and curious piece of good fortune. In her wildest dreams she had never dared to hope that such a thing might be.

My Lady Dunstanwolde, on her first visit home, bore her sister back with her to the manor, and there established her. She gave her a suite of rooms and a waiting woman of her own, and even provided her with a suitable wardrobe. This last she had chosen herself with a taste and fitness which only such wit as her own could have devised.

"They are not great rooms I give thee, Anne," she said, "but quiet and small ones, which you can make home-like in such ways as I know your taste lies. My lord has aided me to choose romances for your shelves, he knowing more of books than I do. And I shall not dress thee out like a peacock with gay colours and great farthingales. They would frighten thee, poor woman, and be a burden with their weight. I have chosen such things as are not too splendid, but will suit thy pale face and shot partridge eyes."

Anne stood in the middle of her room and looked about at its comforts, wondering.

"Sister," she said, "why are you so good to me? What have I done to serve you? Why is it Anne instead of Barbara you are so gracious to?"

"Perchance because I am a vain woman and would be worshipped as you worship me."

"But you are always worshipped," Anne faltered.

"Ay, by men!" said Clorinda, mocking; "but not by women. And it may be that my pride is so high that I must be worshipped by a woman too. You would always love me, sister Anne. If you saw me break the law—if you saw me stab the man I hated to the heart, you would think it must be pardoned to me."

She laughed, and yet her voice was such that Anne lost her breath and caught at it again.

"Ay, I should love you, sister!" she cried. "Even then I could not but love you. I should know you could not strike so an innocent creature, and that to be so hated he must have been worthy of hate. You—are not like other women, sister Clorinda; but you could not be base—for you have a great heart."