ire and solemness. But Mistress Anne, gazing at her,
thrilled to her heart's core, had a strange sense of fear, wondering
whence this mood had come, how it had grown, and what it might bring
forth in the unknown future.

The custom of the time held that a widowed lady should mourn retired a
year, but 'twas near two before her ladyship of Dunstanwolde came forth
from her seclusion, and casting her weeds returned to town. And my Lord
Duke of Osmonde had come again to Camylott when the news was spread.

He had been engaged in grave business, and having been abroad upon it
had, on his return, travelled at once to the country. To Camylott he
came because it was his refuge in all unrestful hours or deeply grave
ones--the broad, heavenly scene spread out before it soothed him when
he gazed through its windows, the waving and rustle of the many huge
trees on every side never ceased to bring back to him something of the
feeling he had had in his childhood, that they were mighty and
mysterious friends who hushed him as a child is hushed to sleep; and so
he came to Camylott for a few days' repose before re-entering Court
life with its tumults and broils and scheming.

In a certain comfortable suite of rooms which had once been a part of
the nurseries there lived at peaceful ease an aged woman who loved his
Grace well and faithfully, and had so loved him from his childhood,
knowing indeed more of the intimate details of his life and career than
he himself imagined. This old gentlewoman was Mistress Rebecca Halsell,
the whilom chieftainess of the nursery department, and having failed in
health as age drew near her, she had been generously installed a quiet
pensioner in her old domain. When the Marquess of Roxholm had returned
from his first campaign he had found her living in these apartments--a
woman nearing seventy, somewhat bent with rheumatism, and white-haired,
but with the grave, clear eyes he remembered, still undimmed.

"I hope to be here still, my lord Marquess," she had said, "when you
bring your lady home to us--even perhaps when the nurseries are thrown
open again. I have been a happy woman in these rooms since the first
hour I entered them and took your lordship from Nurse Alison's arms."

She had led a happy life, being surrounded by every comfort, all the
servants being her friends, and she spending her days with books and
simple work, sitting chiefly at the large window from whence she could
see the park, and the