t thou wert no worse! The blessed saints help thee, for
none other be like to do it save them and me."

And suddenly rising, she slipped down on her knees, holding the child
before her, beside a niche where a lamp made of pottery burned before a
blackened wooden doll.

"Lady of Pity, hast thou none for this little child? Mother of Mercy,
for thee to deceive me! This whole month have I been on my knees to
thee many times in the day, praying thee to incline the Lady's heart,
when she should come, to show a mother's pity to this motherless one.
And thou hast not heard me--thou hast not heard me. Holy Virgin, what
doest thou? Have I not offered candles at thy shrine? Have I not
deprived myself of needful things to pay for thy litanies? What could I
have done more? Is this thy pity, Lady of Pity?--this thy compassion,
Mother and Maiden?"

But the passionate appeal was lost on the lifeless image to which it was
made. As of old, so now, "there was neither voice, not any to answer,
nor any that regarded."

Nineteen years after that summer day, a girl of twenty-two sat gazing
from the casement in that turret-chamber--a girl whose face even a
flatterer would have praised but little; and Philippa Fitzalan had no
flatterers. The pretty child--as pretty children often do--had grown
into a very ordinary, commonplace woman. Her hair, indeed, was glossy
and luxuriant, and had deepened from its early flaxen into the darkest
shade to which it was possible for flaxen to change; her eyes were dark,
with a sad, tired, wistful look in them--a look

"Of a dumb creature who had been beaten once,
And never since was easy with the world."

Her face was white and thin, her figure tall, slender, angular, and
rather awkward. None had ever cared to amend her awkwardness; it
signified to nobody whether she looked well or ill. In a word, _she_
signified to nobody. The tears might burn under her eyelids, or
overflow and fall,--she would never be asked what was the matter; she
might fail under her burdens and faint in the midst of them,--and if it
occurred to any one to prevent material injury to her, that was the very
utmost she could expect. Not that the Lady Alianora was unkind to her
stepdaughter: that is, not actively unkind. She simply ignored her
existence. Philippa was provided, as a matter of course, with necessary
clothes, just as the men who served in the hall were provided with
livery; but anything not absolutely