as always a rebel
and loved wild, lawless ways."

When she said it my lord Duke, who was riding near, looked straight
before him, with face which had belied his laugh, had any seen it. He
was thinking that he could well imagine what a life a man might lead
with her, wandering about the thick green woods and white roads and
purple moors, tramping, side by side, in the sweet wind and bright
sunshine, and even the soft falling rain, each owner of a splendid body
which defied the weather and laughed at fatigue. To carry their simple
meal with them and stop to eat it joyously together under a hedge, to
lie under the shade of a broad branched tree to rest when the sun was
hot and hear the skylarks singing in the blue sky, and then at
night-time to sit at the door of a tent and watch the stars and tell
each other fanciful stories of them, while the red camp-fire danced
and glowed in the dark. Of no other woman could he have had such a wild
fancy--the others were too frail and delicate to be a man's comrades
out of doors; but she, who stood so straight and strong, who moved like
a young deer, who could swing along across the moors for a day without
fatigue, who had the eye of a hawk and a spirit so gay and untiring--a
man might range the world with her and know joy every moment. 'Twas
ordained that all she did or said should seem a call to him and should
bring visions to him, and there was many an hour when he thanked Heaven
she seemed so free from fault, since if she had had one he could not
have seen it, or if he had seen, might have loved it for her sake. But
she had none, it seemed, and despite all her strange past was surely
more noble than any other woman. She was so true--he told himself--so
loyal and so high in her honour of the old man who loved her. Had she
even been innocently light in her bearing among the men who flocked
about her, she might have given her lord many a bitter hour, and seemed
regardless of his dignity; but she could rule and restrain all,
howsoever near they were to the brink of folly. As for himself, Osmonde
thought, all his days he had striven to be master of himself, and felt
he must remain so or die; but he could have worshipped her upon his
knees in gratitude that no woman's vanity tempted her to use her
powers and loveliness to shake him in his hard won calmness and lure
him to her feet. He was but man and human, and vaunted himself upon
being no more.

There had been for some months much