ad died, in a vain attempt to gather the men to resist the
irresistible maiden. His groom, who had succumbed for a time to wounds
and weakness on his way home to Alnwick, was touched by the warmth and
emotion with which the kind bedeswoman listened to his lamentation over
the good and loyal knight, whom she pictured to herself resisting the
enchantress's dread power as dauntlessly as he had defied the phantoms of
the Dance of Death.

No whisper ever reached Esclairmonde that the terrible Pucelle was a
maiden as pure and high-souled as herself. All that she heard more was
that this terror of the English and Burgundians was taken, imprisoned for
a time by her own Luxemburg kindred, and then carried to Rouen, where the
kind Duchess Anne of Bedford did her best to persuade her to overcome the
superstition that kept her in male garments, thus greatly tending to
increase the belief in her connection with the powers of evil. French
and Burgundian bishops, and even the University of Paris, were the judges
of the maiden; and the dastard prince she had crowned never stirred a
finger nor uttered a protest in her behalf. Bedford, always disposed to
belief in witchcraft, acquiesced in the decision of Churchmen, which was
therefore called the judgment of the Church; but when he removed himself
and his duchess from Rouen, and left the conduct of the matter to the
sterner and harder Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, it was with little thought
that after-generations would load his memory with the fate of Jeanne
d'Arc, as though her sufferings had proceeded from his individual malice.

Esclairmonde never saw Bedford again, and only heard through Alice, now
Countess of Salisbury, how when good Duchess Anne was dead, and her
gentle influence removed, Burgundy's disinclination to the English cause
was no longer balanced; and how Bedford, perplexed, disheartened, broken
in health, but still earnest to propitiate friends for his helpless
nephew, had listened to the wily whisper of the Bishop of Therouenne,
that his niece, Jaquette, would secure the devotion of the Count de St.
Pol, and that she was moreover like unto another Demoiselle de Luxemburg.

How like, Esclairmonde could judge, when her kinswoman, widowed in her
eighteenth year, at six months' end, came to London to claim her dower.
Never, since her days of wandering and anxiety, had Esclairmonde felt
such pain as when she perceived how little store the thoughtless girl had
set by the