of yellow-gold flowers in her hand,
which looked as if surely she might just have gathered them on the
terrace at Camylott.

And she had surely by some magic blotted out the past and had awakened
to a present which was like new birth and had no past, for she blushed
the loveliest, radiant blush--at sight of him--as if she had been no
great lady, but a sweet, glowing girl.

What he said to her, or she to him, he knew no more than any lesser man
in his case knows, for he was in a whirl of wonder and strange delight,
and could scarce hold in his mind that there was need that he should be
sober, this being his first visit to her since she had cast the weeds
worn for his own kinsman; and there sate Mistress Anne, changing from
red to white, as if through some great secret emotion--though he did
not know 'twas at the sight of them standing together, and the sudden
knowledge and joy it brought to her, which made her very heart to quake
in its tenderness. This--_this_ was the meaning of what she had so
wondered at in her sister's mood when they spoke of the poor girl left
widowed; this was how she had known, and if so, she must have learned
it in her own despite at first, in that year when she had been a bound
woman, when they two had been forced to encounter each other, holding
their hearts in gyves of iron and making no sound or sign. And the fond
creature remembered the night before the marriage when she had passed
through a strange scene in her sister's chamber, and one thing she had
said came back to her, and now she understood its meaning.

"I love my Lord Dunstanwolde as well as any other man, and better than
some, for I do not hate him. Since I have been promised to him"--('twas
this which now came back to her)--"I own I have for a moment met
another gentleman who _might_--'twas but for a moment, and 'tis done
with."

And this--this had been he, his Grace the Duke of Osmonde--who was so
fit a mate for her, and whose brown eyes so burned with love. And she
was a free woman, and there they stood at the open window among the
flowers--both bound, both free!

Free! She started a little as she said the word in thought again, for
she knew a strange wild story none other than herself knew, and her
sister, and Sir John Oxon, and they did not suspect she shared their
secret. And for long it had seemed to her only some cruel thing she had
dreamed; and the wild lovely creature she had watched and stood guard
over with such t