ard that just rested on the fur
edging of Isabel's cloak; his lips were drawn tight, but slightly parted,
showing the rim of his white teeth, as if he snarled with pain.

The only furniture in the room was a single table and chair; the table
was drawn up not far from the bed, and a book or two, with a flask of
cordial and some fragments of food on a plate lay upon it; his cloak and
doublet and ruff lay across the chair and his shoes below it, and a
little linen lay in a pile in another corner; but the clothes in which he
had been tortured the evening before, his shirt and hose, could not be
taken off him and he lay in them still. They had been so soaked with
sweat, that Isabel had found him shivering, and laid her cloak over him,
and now he lay quiet and warm.

Earlier in the night she had been reading to him, and a taper still
burned in a candlestick on the table; but for the last two hours he had
lain either in a sleep or a swoon, and she had laid the book down and was
watching him.

He was so motionless that he would have seemed dead except for the steady
rise and fall of a fold in the mantle, and for a sudden muscular twitch
every few minutes. Isabel herself was scarcely less motionless; her face
was clear and pale as it always was, but perfectly serene, and even her
lips did not quiver. She was kneeling and leaning back now, and her hands
were clasped in her lap. There was a proud content in her face; her dear
brother had not uttered one name on the rack except those of the Saviour
and of the Blessed Mother. So the Lieutenant had told her.

Suddenly his eyes opened and there was nothing but peace in them; and his
lips moved. Isabel leaned forward on her hands and bent her ear to his
mouth till his breath was warm on it, and she could hear the whisper....

Then she opened the book that lay face down on the table and began to
read on, from the point at which she had laid it down two hours before.

"'_Erat autem hora tertia: et crucifixerunt eum._ And it was the third
hour and they crucified him ... And with him they crucify two thieves,
the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. And the scripture
was fulfilled which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.'"

Her voice was slow and steady as she read the unfamiliar Latin, still
kneeling, with the book a little raised to catch the candlelight, and her
grave tranquil eyes bent upon it. Only once did her voice falter, and
then she commanded it