in story-books--and keep them, too, and die
sanctified, blessing one another and mounting on radiant wings to
heaven.... Where I should find no heaven save in you! Ah, God! that is
the most terrible. That takes my heart away--to die and wake to find
myself still his wife--to live through all eternity without you--and no
hope of you--no hope!... For I could be patient through this earthly
life, losing my youth and yours forever, ... but not after death! No,
no! I cannot.... Better hell with you than endless heaven with him!...
Don't speak to me.... Take your hand from my hand.... Can you not see
that I mean nothing of what I say--that I do not know what I am
saying?... I must go back; I am hostess--a happy one, as you perceive....
Will I never learn to curb my tongue? You must forget every word I
uttered--do you hear me?"

She sprang up in her rustling silks and took a dozen steps towards the
door, then turned.

"Do you hear me?" she said. "I bid you remember every word I
uttered--every word!"

She was gone, leaving me staring at the flowers and silver and the
clustered lights. But I saw them not; for before my eyes floated the
vision of a slender hand, and on the wedding-finger I saw a faint, rosy
circle, as I had seen it there a moment since, when Dorothy dropped her
bare arms on the cloth and laid her head between them.

So it was true; whether for good or ill my cousin wore the ghost-ring
which for ages, Cato says, we Ormonds have worn before the
marriage-ring. There was Ormond blood in Dorothy. Did she wear the sign
as prophecy for that ring Sir George should wed her with? I dared not
doubt it--and yet, why did I also wear the sign?

Then in a flash the forgotten legend of the Maid-at-Arms came back to
me, ringing through my ears in clamorous words:

"Serene, 'mid love's alarms,
For all time shall the Maids-at-Arms,
Wearing the ghost-ring, triumph with their constancy!"

I sprang to the door in my excitement and stared at the picture of the
Maid-at-Arms.

Sweetly the violet eyes of the maid looked back at me, her armor
glittered, her soft throat seemed to swell with the breath of life.

Then I crept nearer, eyes fixed on her wedding-finger. And I saw there a
faint rosy circle as though a golden ring had pressed the snowy flesh.

XIII

THE MAID-AT-ARMS

I remember little of that dinner save that it differed vastly from the
quarrelsome carousal at which the Johnsons and Butlers figu