y shadow of love.
The "mother-want about the world," which pressed on her so heavily, they
would never fill. The dull, blank uniformity of simple apathy was all
she ever received from any of them.

Her very place was filled. The Lady Joan was the eldest daughter of the
house--not Mistress Philippa. For the pleasure of the Countess had been
fulfilled, and Mistress Philippa the girl was called. And when Joan was
married and went away from the castle (in a splendid litter hung with
crimson velvet), her sister Alesia stepped into her place as a matter of
course. Philippa did not, indeed, see the drawbacks to Joan's lot.
They were not apparent on the surface. That the stately young noble who
rode on a beautiful Barbary horse beside the litter, actually hated the
girl whom he had been forced to marry, did not enter into her
calculations: but as Joan cared very little for that herself, it was the
less necessary that Philippa should do so. And Philippa only missed
Joan from the house by the fact that her work was so much the lighter,
and her life a trifle less disagreeable than before.

More considerations than one were troubling Philippa just now. Blanche,
one of the Countess's tire-women, had just visited her turret-chamber,
to inform her that the Lady Alesia was betrothed, and would be married
six months thence. It did not, however, trouble her that she had heard
of this through a servant; she never looked for anything else. Had she
been addicted (which, fortunately for her, she was not) to that most
profitless of all manufactures, grievance-making,--she might have wept
over this little incident. But except for one reason, the news of her
sister's approaching marriage was rather agreeable to Philippa. She
would have another tyrant the less; though it was true that Alesia had
always been the least unkind to her of the three, and she would have
welcomed Mary's marriage with far greater satisfaction. But that one
terrible consideration which Blanche had forced on her notice!

"I marvel, indeed, that my gracious Lord hath not thought of your
disposal, Mistress Philippa, ere this."

Suppose he should think of it! For to Philippa's apprehension, love was
so far from being synonymous with marriage, that she held the two barely
compatible. Marriage to her would be merely another phase of Egyptian
bondage, under a different Pharaoh. And she knew this was her probable
lot: that (unless her father's neglect on this s