e silent at the end
but she.

"And at last she kissed the crucifix and cried in a sweet piercing voice,
'As thine arms, O Jesus, were spread upon the Cross, so receive me into
Thy mercy and forgive me my sins!'"

Again Mistress Corbet was silent; and Anthony drew a long sobbing breath
of pure pity, and Isabel was crying quietly to herself.

"When the headsmen offered to assist her," went on the low voice, "the
queen smiled at the gentlemen and said that she had never had such grooms
before; and then they let the ladies come up. When they began to help her
with her dress I covered my face--I could not help it. There was such a
stillness now that I could hear her beads chink at her girdle. When I
looked again, she was ready, with her sweet neck uncovered: all round her
was black but the headsman, who wore a white apron over his velvet, and
she, in her beauty, and oh! her face was so fair and delicate and her
eyes so tender and joyous. And as her ladies looked at her, they sobbed
piteously. 'Ne criez vous,' said she.

"Then she knelt down, and Mistress Mowbray bound her eyes. She smiled
again under the handkerchief. 'Adieu,' she said, and then, 'Au revoir.'

"Then she said once more a Latin psalm, and then laid her head down, as
on a pillow.

"'In manus tuas, Domine,' she said."

* * * *

Mary Corbet stopped, and leaned forward a little, putting her hand into
her bosom; Anthony looked at her as she drew up a thin silk cord with a
ruby ring attached to it.

"This was hers," she said simply, and held it out. Each of the Catholics
took it and kissed it reverently, and Mary replaced it.

"When they lifted her," she added, "a little dog sprang out from her
clothes and yelped. And at that the man near me, who had laughed as she
came in, wept."

* * * *

Then the four sat silent in the firelight.

CHAPTER IV

STANFIELD PLACE

Life at Stanfield Place was wonderfully sweet to Anthony and Isabel after
their exile abroad, for both of them had an intense love of England and
of English ways. The very sight of fair-faced children, and the noise of
their shrill familiar voices from the village street, the depths of the
August woods round them, the English manners of living--all this was
alive with a full deliberate joy to these two. Besides, there was the
unfailing