of her burial, Earl Richard threw off the mask.

"Before that time, I had wonderingly doubted if he loved her. I knew
then that he hated her. And I found one other thing, sadder yet--that
she loved him. I confess unto thee, by the blessed ankle-bones of Saint
Denis, that I never could make out why. I never saw in him anything to
love; and had I so done, methinks he had soon had that folly out of me.
At first I scarcely understood all. I used to see livid blue bruises on
her neck and arms, and ask her wherefore they were there; and she would
only flush faintly, and say,--`It is nothing--I struck myself against
something.' I never knew for months against what she struck. But she
never complained--not even to me. She was patient as an angel of God.

"Now and then I used to notice that there came to the castle an aged
man, in the garb of the Friars Predicants; unto whom--and to him only--
Isabel used to confess. So changed was he from his old self, that I
never knew till long after that this was our father's old confessor,
Giles de Edingdon. She only said to me that he taught her good things.
If he taught her her saintly endurance, it was good. But I fear he
taught her other things as well: to hold in light esteem that blessed
doctrine of grace of condignity, whereby man can and doth merit the
favour of God. And what he gave her instead thereof I know not. She
used to tell me, but I forget now. Only once, in an awful hour, she
said unto me, that but for the knowledge he had given her, she could not
have borne her life.

"What was that hour?--Ah! it was the hour, when for the first time he
threw aside all care, even before me, and struck her senseless on the
rushes at my feet. And I never forgave him. She forgave him, poor
innocent!--nay, rather, I think she loved him too well to think of
forgiveness. I never saw love like hers; it would have borne death
itself, and have kissed the murderer's hand in dying. Some women do
love so. I never did, nor could.

"But when this awful hour came, and she fell at my feet, as if dead, by
a blow from his hand in anger,--the spirit of my fathers came upon me,
and like a prophetess of woe, child, I stood forth and cursed him! I
think God spake by me, for words seemed to come from me without my will;
and I said that for two generations the heir of his house should die by
violence in the flower of his age [See Note 6]. Thou mayest see if it
be so; but I never shall.