bending over her, "permit me to approach. I have
some knowledge of these seizures. Your pardon!"

He knelt also and took the moveless hand, feeling the pulse; he, too,
thrust his hand within the breast and held it there, looking at the
sunken face.

"My dear lord," her ladyship was saying, as if to the prostrate man's ear
alone, knowing that her tender voice must reach him if aught would--as
indeed was truth. "Edward! My dear--dear lord!"

Osmonde held his hand steadily over the heart. The guests shrunk back,
stricken with terror.

There was that in this corner of the splendid room which turned faces
pale.

Osmonde slowly withdrew his hand, and turning to the kneeling woman--with
a pallor like that of marble, but with a noble tenderness and pity in his
eyes--

"My lady," he said, "you are a brave woman. Your great courage must
sustain you. The heart beats no more. A noble life is finished."

* * * * *

The guests heard, and drew still farther back, a woman or two faintly
whimpering; a hurrying lacquey parted the crowd, and so, way being made
for him, the physician came quickly forward.

Anne put her shaking hands up to cover her gaze. Osmonde stood still,
looking down. My Lady Dunstanwolde knelt by the couch and hid her
beautiful face upon the dead man's breast.

CHAPTER XII--Which treats of the obsequies of my Lord of Dunstanwolde, of
his lady's widowhood, and of her return to town

All that remained of my Lord Dunstanwolde was borne back to his ancestral
home, and there laid to rest in the ancient tomb in which his fathers
slept. Many came from town to pay him respect, and the Duke of Osmonde
was, as was but fitting, among them. The countess kept her own
apartments, and none but her sister, Mistress Anne, beheld her.

The night before the final ceremonies she spent sitting by her lord's
coffin, and to Anne it seemed that her mood was a stranger one, than ever
woman had before been ruled by. She did not weep or moan, and only once
kneeled down. In her sweeping black robes she seemed more a majestic
creature than she had ever been, and her beauty more that of a statue
than of a mortal woman. She sent away all other watchers, keeping only
her sister with her, and Anne observed in her a strange protecting
gentleness when she spoke of the dead man.

"I do not know whether dead men can feel and hear," she said. "Sometimes
there has come into my mind--and made me shudder--the thought