e life and gladness
That over-filled her."

She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle,
where the Duke awaited her.

"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls"

--and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and
thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of
gratitude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who
rode on her other hand, the name of every bird that flew past: "Was
that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?"

Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian duchess--but
she _is_ the same!), the little lady rode forward:

"When suddenly appeared the Duke."

She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the
Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather
aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick
tall yellow Duchess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the
background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky
sullied by a chill wind,

"The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey;
For such things must begin some one day."

But the brave spirit survived. In a day or two she was well again, as if
she could not believe that God did not mean her to be content and glad
in His sight. "So, smiling as at first went she." She was filled to the
brim with energy; there never was such a wife as she would have made for
a shepherd, a miner, a huntsman--and this huntsman, who has _had_ a
beloved wife, knows what he is saying.

"She was active, stirring, all fire--
Could not rest, could not tire--
To a stone she might have given life! . . .
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all."

For the castle was crammed with retainers, and the Duke's plan permitted
a wife, at most, to meet his eye with the other trophies in the hall and
out of it:

"To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen
At the proper place, in the proper minute,
And die away the life between."

The little Duchess, with her warm heart and her smile like the Italian
girl's that "went everywhere," broke every rule at first. It was amusing
enough (the old huntsman remembers)--but for