like a wild sob of
terror, the duchess threw her arm about her and drew her nearer.

"Sweet Anne," she shuddered--"sweet Anne--come back--you wander!"

"Nay, 'tis not wandering," Anne said. "'Tis true, sister. There is no
night these years gone by I have not remembered it again--and seen. In
the night after that you bore him there--I prayed until the mid-hours,
when all were sleeping fast--and then I stole down--in my bare feet, that
none could hear me--and at last I found my way in the black dark--feeling
the walls until I reached that farthest door in the stone--and then I
lighted my taper and oped it."

"Anne!" cried the duchess--"Anne, look through the tower window at the
blueness of the sky--at the blueness, Anne!" But drops of cold water had
started out and stood upon her brow.

"He lay there in his grave--it was a little black place with its stone
walls--his fair locks were tumbled," Anne went on, whispering. "The spot
was black upon his brow--and methought he had stopped mocking, and surely
looked upon some great and awful thing which asked of him a question. I
knelt, and laid his curls straight, and his hands, and tried to shut his
eyes, but close they would not, but stared at that which questioned. And
having loved him so, I kissed his poor cheek as his mother might have
done, that he might not stand outside, having carried not one tender
human thought with him. And, oh, I prayed, sister--I prayed for his poor
soul with all my own. 'If there is one noble or gentle thing he has ever
done through all his life,' I prayed, 'Jesus remember it--Christ do not
forget.' We who are human do so few things that are noble--oh, surely
one must count."

The duchess's head lay near her sister's breast, and she had fallen a-
sobbing--a-sobbing and weeping like a young broken child.

"Oh, brave and noble, pitiful, strong, fair soul!" she cried. "As Christ
loved you have loved, and He would hear your praying. Since you so
pleaded, He would find one thing to hang His mercy on."

She lifted her fair, tear-streaming face, clasping her hands as one
praying.

"And I--and I," she cried--"have I not built a temple on his grave? Have
I not tried to live a fair life, and be as Christ bade me? Have I not
loved, and pitied, and succoured those in pain? Have I not filled a
great man's days with bliss, and love, and wifely worship? Have I not
given him noble children, bred in high lovingness, and taught to love all
t