d, and oxen roasted, and work stopped, and dancers footed it
upon the green.

"Surely the new-born thing comes here to happiness," 'twas said
everywhere, "for never yet was woman loved as is his mother."

In her stately bed her Grace the duchess lay, with the face of the Mother
Mary, and her man-child drinking from her breast. The duke walked softly
up and down, so full of joy that he could not sit still. When he had
entered first, it was his wife's self who had sate upright in her bed,
and herself laid his son within his arms.

"None other shall lay him there," she said, "I have given him to you. He
is a great child, but he has not taken from me my strength."

He was indeed a great child, even at his first hour, of limbs and
countenance so noble that nurses and physicians regarded him amazed. He
was the offspring of a great love, of noble bodies and great souls. Did
such powers alone create human beings, the earth would be peopled with a
race of giants.

Amid the veiled spring sunshine and the flower-scented silence, broken
only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft
asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and
her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and
now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf
hand and the lace frill of his mother's night-rail. She dared not
further disturb them.

"Sure God forgives," she breathed--"for Christ's sake. He would not give
this little tender thing a punishment to bear."

CHAPTER XXII--Mother Anne

There was no punishment. The tender little creature grew as a blossom
grows from bud to fairest bloom. His mother flowered as he, and spent
her days in noble cherishing of him and tender care. Such motherhood and
wifehood as were hers were as fair statues raised to Nature's self.

"Once I thought that I was under ban," she said to her lord in one of
their sweetest hours; "but I have been given love and a life, and so I
know it cannot be. Do I fill all your being, Gerald?"

"All, all!" he cried, "my sweet, sweet woman."

"Leave I no longing unfulfilled, no duty undone, to you, dear love, to
the world, to human suffering I might aid? I pray Christ with all
passionate humbleness that I may not."

"He grants your prayer," he answered, his eyes moist with worshipping
tenderness.

"And this white soul given to me from the outer bounds we know not--it
has no