says she.

"Had he not been," the child answered, "my mother would have been afraid
to trust him. I am but a poor country widow's daughter, but was well
brought up, and honestly--and when he came to our village my mother was
afraid, because he was a gentleman; but when she saw his piety, and how
he went to church and sang the psalms and prayed for grace, she let me
listen to him."

"Did he go to church and sing and pray at first?" my lady asks.

"'Twas in church he saw me, your ladyship," she was answered. "He said
'twas his custom to go always when he came to a new place, and that often
there he found the most heavenly faces, for 'twas piety and innocence
that made a face like to an angel's; and 'twas innocence and virtue
stirred his heart to love, and not mere beauty which so fades."

"Go on, innocent thing," my lady said; and she turned aside to Anne,
flashing from her eyes unseen a great blaze, and speaking in a low and
hurried voice. "God's house," she said--"God's prayers--God's songs of
praise--he used them all to break a tender heart, and bring an innocent
life to ruin--and yet was he not struck dead?"

Anne hid her face and shuddered.

"He was a gentleman," the poor young thing cried, sobbing--"and I no fit
match for him, but that he loved me. 'Tis said love makes all equal; and
he said I was the sweetest, innocent young thing, and without me he could
not live. And he told my mother that he was not rich or the fashion now,
and had no modish friends or relations to flout any poor beauty he might
choose to wed."

"And he would marry you?" my lady's voice broke in. "He said that he
would marry you?"

"A thousand times, your ladyship, and so told my mother, but said I must
come to town and be married at his lodgings, or 'twould not be counted a
marriage by law, he being a town gentleman, and I from the country."

"And you came," said Mistress Anne, down whose pale cheeks the tears were
running--"you came at his command to follow him?"

"What day came you up to town?" demands my lady, breathless and leaning
forward. "Went you to his lodgings, and stayed you there with him,--even
for an hour?"

The poor child gazed at her, paling.

"He was not there!" she cried. "I came alone because he said all must be
secret at first; and my heart beat so with joy, my lady, that when the
woman of the house whereat he lodges let me in I scarce could speak. But
she was a merry woman and good-natured, and only