waited upon her at her house, accompanied by their
attendants, bearing burdens of brocades and silks, and splendid stuffs of
all sorts. Her chariot was to be seen standing before their shops, and
the interest in her purchases was so great that fashionable beauties
would contrive to visit the counters at the same hours as herself, so
that they might catch glimpses of what she chose. In her own great house
all was repressed excitement; her women were enraptured at being allowed
the mere handling and laying away of the glories of her wardrobe; the
lacqueys held themselves with greater state, knowing that they were soon
to be a duke's servants; her little black Nero strutted about, his turban
set upon his pate with a majestic cock, and disdained to enter into
battle with such pages of his own colour as wore only silver collars, he
feeling assured that his own would soon be of gold.

The World of Fashion said when her ladyship's equipage drove by, that her
beauty was like that of the god of day at morning, and that 'twas plain
that no man or woman had ever beheld her as his Grace of Osmonde would.

"She loves at last," a wit said. "Until the time that such a woman
loves, however great her splendour, she is as the sun behind a cloud."

"And now this one hath come forth, and shines so that she warms us in
mere passing," said another. "What eyes, and what a mouth, with that
strange smile upon it. Whoever saw such before? and when she came to
town with my Lord Dunstanwolde, who, beholding her, would have believed
that she could wear such a look?"

In sooth, there was that in her face and in her voice when she spoke
which almost made Anne weep, through its strange sweetness and radiance.
'Twas as if the flood of her joy had swept away all hardness and disdain.
Her eyes, which had seemed to mock at all they rested on, mocked no more,
but ever seemed to smile at some dear inward thought.

One night when she went forth to a Court ball, being all attired in
brocade of white and silver, and glittering with the Dunstanwolde
diamonds, which starred her as with great sparkling dewdrops, and yet had
not the radiance of her eyes and smile, she was so purely wonderful a
vision that Anne, who had been watching her through all the time when she
had been under the hands of her tirewoman, and beholding her now so
dazzling and white a shining creature, fell upon her knees to kiss her
hand almost as one who worships.

"Oh, sister," she