hese fair things, thought of it but as the opening of a golden door.
They entered softly, as entering the chamber of a queen, and moving
tenderly, with low and gentle speech, spread all their flowers about the
bed--laying them round her head, on her breast, and in her hands, and
strewing them thick everywhere.

"She lies in a bower and smiles at us," one said. "She hath grown
beautiful like you, mother, and her face seems like a white star in the
morning."

"She loves us as she ever did," the fair child Daphne said; "she will
never cease to love us, and will be our angel. Now have we an angel of
our own."

When the duke returned, who had been absent since the day before, the
duchess led him to the tower chamber, and they stood together hand in
hand and gazed at her peace.

"Gerald," the duchess said, in her tender voice, "she smiles, does not
she?"

"Yes," was Osmonde's answer--"yes, love, as if at God, who has smiled at
herself--faithful, tender woman heart!"

The hand which he held in his clasp clung closer. The other crept to his
shoulder and lay there tremblingly.

"How faithful and how tender, my Gerald," Clorinda said, "I only know.
She is my saint--sweet Anne, whom I dared treat so lightly in my poor
wayward days. Gerald, she knows all my sins, and to-day she has carried
them in her pure hands to God and asked His mercy on them. She had none
of her own."

"And so having done, dear heart, she lies amid her flowers, and smiles,"
he said, and he drew her white hand to press it against his breast.

* * * * *

While her body slept beneath soft turf and flowers, and that which was
her self was given in God's heaven, all joys for which her earthly being
had yearned, even when unknowing how to name its longing, each year that
passed made more complete and splendid the lives of those she so had
loved. Never, 'twas said, had woman done such deeds of gentleness and
shown so sweet and generous a wisdom as the great duchess. None who were
weak were in danger if she used her strength to aid them; no man or woman
was a lost thing whom she tried to save: such tasks she set herself as no
lady had ever given herself before; but 'twas not her way to fail--her
will being so powerful, her brain so clear, her heart so purely noble.
Pauper and prince, noble and hind honoured her and her lord alike, and
all felt wonder at their happiness. It seemed that they had learned
life's meaning and the honouring of love, and