e but to hear the priest commend
the parting Christian soul, while, with a few more faint breaths,
the soul of Margaret of Scotland passed beyond the world of sneers,
treachery, and calumny, to the land 'where the wicked cease from
troubling, and where the weary are at rest.'

CHAPTER 12. SORROW ENDED

'Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies:
Death, avenger of wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies.'
Much Ado About Nothing.

A day's rest revived Jean enough to make her eager to push on to
Chalons, and enough likewise to revive her coquettish and petulant
temper.

Sigismund and Eleanor might ride on together in a species of paradise,
as having not only won each other's love, but acted out a bit of the
romance that did not come to full realisation much more often in those
days than in modern ones. They were quite content to let King Rene glory
in them almost as much as he had arrived at doing in his own daughter
and her Ferry, and they could be fully secure; Sigismund had no one's
consent to ask, save a formal licence from his cousin, the Emperor
Frederick III., who would pronounce him a fool for wedding a penniless
princess, but had no real power over him; while Eleanor was certain that
all her kindred would feel that she was fulfilling her destiny, and high
sweet thoughts of thankfulness and longing to be a blessing to him who
loved her, and to those whom he ruled, filled her spirit as she rode
through the shady woods and breezy glades, bright with early summer.

Jean, however, was galled by the thought that every one at home would
smile and say that she might have spared her journey, and that, in spite
of all her beauty, she had just ended by wedding the Scottish laddie
whom she had scorned. True, her heart knew that she loved him and none
other, and that he truly merited her; but her pride was not willing that
he should feel that he had earned her as a matter of course, and she was
quite as ungracious to Sir George Douglas, the Master of Angus, as
ever she had been to Geordie of the Red Peel, and she showed all the
petulance of a semi-convalescent. She would not let him ride beside her,
his horse made her palfrey restless, she said; and when King Rene talked
about her true knight, she pretended not to understand.

'Ah!' he said, 'be consoled, brave sire; we all know it is the part of
the fair lady to be cruel and merci