wed a low laugh.

"You think a man will lie beneath your feet and be trodden upon without
speaking. You are too high and bold."

She waved her painted fan, and gazed steadily before her at the crowd,
now and then bending her head in gracious greeting and smiling at some
passer-by.

"If I could tell the story of the rose garden, and of what the sun-dial
saw, and what the moon shone on--" he said.

He heard her draw her breath sharply through her teeth, he saw her white
bosom lift as if a wild beast leapt within it, and he laughed again.

"His Grace of Osmonde returns," he said; and then marking, as he never
failed to do, bitterly against his will, the grace and majesty of this
rival, who was one of the greatest and bravest of England's gentlemen,
and knowing that she marked it too, his rage so mounted that it overcame
him.

"Sometimes," he said, "methinks that I shall _kill_ you!"

"Would you gain your end thereby?" she answered, in a voice as low and
deadly.

"I would frustrate his--and yours."

"Do it, then," she hissed back, "some day when you think I fear you."

"'Twould be too easy," he answered. "You fear it too little. There are
bitterer things."

She rose and met his Grace, who had approached her. Always to his
greatness and his noble heart she turned with that new feeling of
dependence which her whole life had never brought to her before. His
deep eyes, falling on her tenderly as she rose, were filled with
protecting concern. Involuntarily he hastened his steps.

"Will your Grace take me to my coach?" she said. "I am not well. May
I--go?" as gently as a tender, appealing girl.

And moved by this, as by her pallor, more than his man's words could have
told, he gave her his arm and drew her quickly and supportingly away.

Mistress Anne did not sleep well that night, having much to distract her
mind and keep her awake, as was often in these days the case. When at
length she closed her eyes her slumber was fitful and broken by dreams,
and in the mid hour of the darkness she wakened with a start as if some
sound had aroused her. Perhaps there had been some sound, though all was
still when she opened her eyes; but in the chair by her bedside sat
Clorinda in her night-rail, her hands wrung hard together on her knee,
her black eyes staring under a brow knit into straight deep lines.

"Sister!" cried Anne, starting up in bed. "Sister!"

Clorinda slowly turned her head towards her, whereupon