voice was choked with tears.

Her friend asked her what she had answered, and she replied--

"I? What I answered? As I live
I never fancied such a thing
As answer possible to give;"

--for just as the body is struck dumb, as it were, when some monstrous
engine of torture is directed upon it, so was her soul for one moment.

But only for one moment. For instantly another knight strode out--Count
Gismond. She had never seen him face to face before, but now, so
beholding him, she knew that she was saved. He walked up to Gauthier and
gave him the lie in his throat, then struck him on the mouth with the
back of a hand, so that the blood flowed from it--

". . . North, South,
East, West, I looked. The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead."

Recalling it now, with her friend Adela, she mused a moment; then said
how her gladdest memory of that hour was that never for an instant had
she felt any doubt of the event.

"God took that on him--I was bid
Watch Gismond for my part: I did.

Did I not watch him while he let
His armourer just brace his greaves,
Rivet his hauberk, on the fret
The while! His foot . . . my memory leaves
No least stamp out, nor how anon
He pulled his ringing gauntlets on."

Before the trumpet's peal had died, the false knight lay, "prone as his
lie," upon the ground; and Gismond flew at him, and drove his sword into
the breast--

"Cleaving till out the truth he clove.

Which done, he dragged him to my feet
And said 'Here die, but end thy breath
In full confession, lest thou fleet
From my first, to God's second death!
Say, hast thou lied?' And, 'I have lied
To God and her,' he said, and died."

Then Gismond knelt and said to her words which even to this dear friend
she could not repeat. She sank on his breast--

"Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world . . ."

--and then and there the two walked forth, amid the shouting multitude,
never more to return. "And so they were married, and lived happy ever
after."

+ + + + +

Gaiety, courage, trust: in this nameless Browning heroine we find the
characteristic marks. On that birthday morning, almost her greatest joy
was in the sense of her cousins' love--

"I thought they loved me, did me grace
To please themselves; 'twas all