e gutter, and a
life of crime, were cared for by a powerful unseen hand. The pretty
country girl saved by his death, protected by her Grace, and living
innocently at Dunstanwolde, memory being merciful to youth, forgot him,
gained back her young roses, and learned to smile and hope as though he
had been but a name.

"Since 'twas I who killed him," said her Grace to her inward soul, "'tis
I must live his life which I took from him, and making it better I may be
forgiven--if there is One who dares to say to the poor thing He made, 'I
will not forgive.'"

Surely it was said there had never been lives so beautiful and noble as
those the Duke of Osmonde and his lady lived as time went by. The Tower
of Camylott, where they had spent the first months of their wedded life,
they loved better than any other of their seats, and there they spent as
much time as their duties of Court and State allowed them. It was indeed
a splendid and beautiful estate, the stately tower being built upon an
eminence, and there rolling out before it the most lovely land in
England, moorland and hills, thick woods and broad meadows, the edge of
the heather dipping to show the soft silver of the sea.

Here was this beauteous woman chatelaine and queen, wife of her husband
as never before, he thought, had wife blessed and glorified the existence
of mortal man. All her great beauty she gave to him in tender, joyous
tribute; all her great gifts of mind and wit and grace it seemed she
valued but as they were joys to him; in his stately households in town
and country she reigned a lovely empress, adored and obeyed with
reverence by every man or woman who served her and her lord. Among the
people on his various estates she came and went a tender goddess of
benevolence. When she appeared amid them in the first months of her
wedded life, the humble souls regarded her with awe not unmixed with
fear, having heard such wild stories of her youth at her father's house,
and of her proud state and bitter wit in the great London world when she
had been my Lady Dunstanwolde; but when she came among them all else was
forgotten in their wonder at her graciousness and noble way.

"To see her come into a poor body's cottage, so tall and grand a lady,
and with such a carriage as she hath," they said, hobnobbing together in
their talk of her, "looking as if a crown of gold should sit on her high
black head, and then to hear her gentle speech and see the look in her