that of one she cannot think
without--who is her life as is her blood and her pulses beating. 'Tis a
joy to say your name, Gerald, as it will be a joy"--and she looked far
out across the sun-goldened valley and plains, with a strange, heavenly
sweet smile--"as it will be a joy to say our child's--and put his little
mouth to my full breast."

"Sweet love," he cried, drawing her by the hand that he might meet the
radiance of her look--"heart's dearest!"

She did not withhold her lovely eyes from him, but withdrew them from the
sunset's mist of gold, and the clouds piled as it were at the gates of
heaven, and they seemed to bring back some of the far-off glory with
them. Indeed, neither her smile nor she seemed at that moment to be
things of earth. She held out her fair, noble arms, and he sprang to
her, and so they stood, side beating against side.

"Yes, love," she said--"yes, love--and I have prayed, my Gerald, that I
may give you sons who shall be men like you. But when I give you women
children, I shall pray with all my soul for them--that they may be just
and strong and noble, and life begin for them as it began not for me."

* * * * *

In the morning of a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and
May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the
grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling
all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower. Children
stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn;
good gossips ran out of their cottage door, wiping their arms dry, from
their tubs and scrubbing-buckets, their honest red faces broadening into
maternal grins.

"Ay, 'tis well over, that means surely," one said to the other; "and a
happy day has begun for the poor lady--though God knows she bore herself
queenly to the very last, as if she could have carried her burden for
another year, and blenched not a bit as other women do. Bless mother and
child, say I."

"And 'tis an heir," said another. "She promised us that we should know
almost as quick as she did, and commanded old Rowe to ring a peal, and
then strike one bell loud between if 'twere a boy, and two if 'twere a
girl child. 'Tis a boy, heard you, and 'twas like her wit to invent such
a way to tell us."

In four other villages the chimes rang just as loud and merrily, and the
women talked, and blessed her Grace and her young child, and casks of ale
were broache