d's pity on my poor madness and girl's frenzy!" And
she gazed at her in amaze, and with humblest, burning tears.

"For my own poor self as well as for you, sister, did I pray God's pity
as I knelt," said Anne. "For long I knew it not--being so ignorant--but
alas! I loved him too!--I loved him too! I have loved no man other all
my days. He was unworthy any woman's love--and I was too lowly for him
to cast a glance on; but I was a woman, and God made us so."

Clorinda clutched her pallid hand.

"Dear God," she cried, "you loved him!"

Anne moved upon her pillow, drawing weakly, slowly near until her white
lips were close upon her sister's ear.

"The night," she panted--"the night you bore him--in your arms--"

Then did the other woman give a shuddering start and lift her head,
staring with a frozen face.

"What! what!" she cried.

"Down the dark stairway," the panting voice went on, "to the far cellar--I
kept watch again."

"You kept watch--you?" the duchess gasped.

"Upon the stair which led to the servants' place--that I might stop them
if--if aught disturbed them, and they oped their doors--that I might send
them back, telling them--it was I."

Then stooped the duchess nearer to her, her hands clutching the coverlid,
her eyes widening.

"Anne, Anne," she cried, "you knew the awful thing that I would hide!
That too? You knew that he was _there_!"

Anne lay upon her pillow, her own eyes gazing out through the ivy-hung
window of her tower at the blue sky and the fair, fleecy clouds. A flock
of snow-white doves were flying back and forth across it, and one sate
upon the window's deep ledge and cooed. All was warm and perfumed with
summer's sweetness. There seemed naught between her and the uplifting
blueness, and naught of the earth was near but the dove's deep-throated
cooing and the laughter of her Grace's children floating upward from the
garden of flowers below.

"I lie upon the brink," she said--"upon the brink, sister, and methinks
my soul is too near to God's pure justice to fear as human things fear,
and judge as earth does. She said I did no wrong. Yes, I knew."

"And knowing," her sister cried, "you came to me _that afternoon_!"

"To stand by that which lay hidden, that I might keep the rest away.
Being a poor creature and timorous and weak--"

"Weak! weak!" the duchess cried, amid a greater flood of streaming
tears--"ay, I have dared to call you so, who have the heart of a great
l