struck him dead that day, 'twould have been mercy to you. I knew him
well."

The young thing gave a bitter cry and fell swooning at her feet; and down
upon her knees my lady went beside her, loosening her gown, and chafing
her poor hands as though they two had been of sister blood.

"Call for hartshorn, Anne, and for water," she said; "she will come out
of her swooning, poor child, and if she is cared for kindly in time her
pain will pass away. God be thanked she knows no pain that cannot pass!
I will protect her--ay, that will I, as I will protect all he hath done
wrong to and deserted."

* * * * *

She was so strangely kind through the poor victim's swoons and weeping
that the very menials who were called to aid her went back to their hall
wondering in their talk of the noble grandness of so great a lady, who on
the very brink of her own joy could stoop to protect and comfort a
creature so far beneath her, that to most ladies her sorrow and desertion
would have been things which were too trivial to count; for 'twas
guessed, and talked over with great freedom and much shrewdness, that
this was a country victim of Sir John Oxon's, and he having deserted his
creditors, was read enough to desert his rustic beauty, finding her heavy
on his hands.

Below stairs the men closing the entrance to the passage with brick,
having caught snatches of the servants' gossip, talked of what they heard
among themselves as they did their work.

"Ay, a noble lady indeed," they said. "For 'tis not a woman's way to be
kindly with the cast-off fancy of a man, even when she does not want him
herself. He was her own worshipper for many a day, Sir John; and before
she took the old earl 'twas said that for a space people believed she
loved him. She was but fifteen and a high mettled beauty; and he as
handsome as she, and had a blue eye that would melt any woman--but at
sixteen he was a town rake, and such tricks as this one he hath played
since he was a lad. 'Tis well indeed for this poor thing her ladyship
hath seen her. She hath promised to protect her, and sends her down to
Dunstanwolde with her mother this very week. Would all fine ladies were
of her kind. To hear such things of her puts a man in the humour to do
her work well."

CHAPTER XX--A noble marriage

When the duke came back from France, and to pay his first eager visit to
his bride that was to be, her ladyship's lacqueys led him not to the
Panelled Parlou