know," she added, and her mouth
quivered as she spoke, "that she can hardly see another spring, and I
would have her last days to be sweet. I doubt not," she went on, "the
good and wise purposes of God, and I think that he often sends his
bright angels to comfort her--for she is never sad--and when you sing as
you sang just now, I seem to understand, and my heart says that it is
well."

While they spoke the Lady Margaret came into the room, with a sudden
radiance; and coming to Paul she kneeled down beside him, and kissed his
hand suddenly, and said, "Helen thanks you, and I thank you, Sir Paul,
for giving her such joy as you could hardly believe."

There came a kind of mist over Paul's eyes, to feel the touch of the
lips that he loved so well upon his hand; but at the same time it
appeared to him like a kind of sin that he who seemed to himself, in
that moment, so stained and hard, should have reverence done him by one
so pure. So he raised her up, and said, "Nay, this is not meet"; and he
would have said many other words that rushed together in his mind, but
he could not frame them right. But presently the Lady Beckwith excused
herself and went; and then Paul for a sweet hour sate, and talked low
and softly to the maiden, and threw such worship into his voice that she
was amazed. But he said no word of love. And she told him of their
simple life, and how her sister suffered. And then Paul feared to stay
longer, and went with a mighty and tumultuous joy in his heart.

Then for many days Paul went thus to the Isle of Thorns--and the Lady
Margaret threw aside her fear of him, and would greet him like a
brother. Sometimes he would find her waiting for him at the gate, and
then the air was suddenly full of a holy radiance. And the Lady
Beckwith, too, began to use him like a son; but the Lady Helen he never
saw--only once or twice he heard her soft voice speak in the dark room.
And Paul made new songs for her, but all the time it was for Margaret
that he sang.

And they at the castle wondered why Sir Paul, who used formerly to sit
so much in his chamber, now went so much abroad. But he guarded his
secret, and they knew not whither he went; only he saw once, from looks
that passed between two of the maidens, that they spoke of him; and this
in times past might have made him ashamed, but now his heart was too
high, and he cared not.

There came a day when Paul, finding himself alone with the Lady
Beckwith, opened his h