e deadly caress of life even though at that moment it had sealed her
doom. Foolish or wise, she was as she was; since, under our frail
society, life is as it is.

Only at night, on those nights when she was sleepless on her own couch
beneath the roof of Catharine Knollys, did Mary Connynge allow herself
to think. Tell, then, ye who may, whether or not she was a mere survival
of some forgotten day of the forest and the glade, as she lay with her
hands clasped in brief moments of emotion. Surely she hoped, as all
women hope who love, that this might endure for her forever. Yet the
next moment there came the thought that inevitably it all must end, and
soon. Then her hand clenched, her eyes grew dry and brilliant. She said
to herself: "There is no hope. He can not be saved! For this short
period of his life he shall be mine, all mine! He shall not be set free!
He shall not go away, to belong, at any time, in any part, to any other
woman! Though he die, yet shall he love me to the end; me, Mary
Connynge, and no other woman!"

Now, under this same roof of Knollys, separated by but a few yards of
space, there lay another woman, thinking also of this convict behind the
prison bars. But this was a woman of another and a nobler mold. Into the
heart of Catharine Knollys there came no mere mad selfishness of desire,
yearn though she did in every fiber of her being since that first time
she felt the mastering kiss of love. There was born in her soul emotion
of a higher sort. The Lady Catharine Knollys prayed, and her prayer was
not that her lover should die, but that he might live; that he might be
free.

Nor was this hope left to wither unnourished in the mind of the
high-bred and courageous English girl. Alone, without confidant to
counsel her, with no woman friend to aid her, the Lady Catharine
Knollys backed her own hopes and wishes with resource and energy. There
came a time, perilously late, when a faint rose showed once more in her
cheek, long so worn, a faintly brighter light glowed in her deep eye.

When Sir Arthur Pembroke received a message from the Lady Catharine
Knollys advising him that the latter would receive him at her home, it
was left for the impulses, the hopes, the imaginings of that modest
young nobleman to establish a reason for the message. Puzzling all along
his rapid way in answer to the summons, Sir Arthur found the answer
which best suited his hopes in the faint flush, the brightened eye of
the young