o, as I was born
strong and passionate, and as you were born noble and pure and high. I
led his mind back to the past, when he had been made happy by the sight
of Betty's little smiling, blushing face, and when he had kissed her and
made love in the hayfields. And this I said--though 'twas not a thing I
have learned from any chaplain--that when 'twas said he should make an
honest woman of her, it was _my_ thought that she had been honest from
the first, being too honest to know that the world was not so, and that
even the man a woman loved with all her soul, might be a rogue, and have
no honesty in him. And at last--'twas when I talked to him about the
child--and that I put my whole soul's strength in--he burst out a-crying
like a schoolboy, and said indeed she was a fond little thing and had
loved him, and he had loved her, and 'twas a shame he had so done by her,
and he had not meant it at the first, but she was so simple, and he had
been a villain, but if he married her now, he would be called a fool, and
laughed at for his pains. Then was I angry, Gerald, and felt my eyes
flash, and I stood up tall and spoke fiercely: 'Let them dare,' I
said--'let any man or woman dare, and then will they see what his Grace
will say.'"

Osmonde drew her to his breast, laughing into her lovely eyes.

"Nay, 'tis not his Grace who need be called on," he said; "'tis her Grace
they love and fear, and will obey; though 'tis the sweetest, womanish
thing that you should call on me when you are power itself, and can so
rule all creatures you come near."

"Nay," she said, with softly pleading face, "let me not rule. Rule for
me, or but help me; I so long to say your name that they may know I speak
but as your wife."

"Who is myself," he answered--"my very self."

"Ay," she said, with a little nod of her head, "that I know--that I am
yourself; and 'tis because of this that one of us cannot be proud with
the other, for there is no other, there is only one. And I am wrong to
say, 'Let me not rule,' for 'tis as if I said, 'You must not rule.' I
meant surely, 'God give me strength to be as noble in ruling as our love
should make me.' But just as one tree is a beech and one an oak, just as
the grass stirs when the summer wind blows over it, so a woman is a
woman, and 'tis her nature to find her joy in saying such words to the
man who loves her, when she loves as I do. Her heart is so full that she
must joy to say her husband's name as