ft and tenderly, the little gipsy child in
her arms. Where had she learned it?

"Gerald," she said once to her husband, and pressed her hand against
her heart, "'twas always here--_here_, lying hid, when none knew
it--when I did not know it myself. When I seemed but a hard, wild
creature, having only men for friends--I was a woman then, and used
sometimes to sit and stare at the red coals of the fire, or the red sun
going down on the moors, and feel longings and pities and sadness I
knew not the meaning of. And often, suddenly, I was made angry by them
and would spring up and walk away that I might be troubled no more. But
'twas Nature crying out in me that I was a woman and could be naught
else."

Her love and tenderness for her sister, Mistress Anne, increased, it
seemed, hour by hour.

"At Camylott, at Marlowell, at Roxholm, at Paulyn, and at Mertoun," she
had said when she was married, "we must have an apartment which is
Anne's. She is my saint and I must keep a niche for her in every house
and set her in it to be worshipped."

And so it was, to whichsoever of their homes they went, Mistress Anne
went with them and found always her own nest warm to receive her.

"It makes me feel audacious, sister," she used to say at first, "to go
from one grand house to the other and be led to Mistress Anne's
apartments, in each, and they always prepared and waiting as if 'twere
I who were a Duchess."

"You are Anne! You are Anne!" said her Grace, and kissed her fondly.

Sometimes she was like a gay and laughing girl, and set all the place
alight with her witcheries; she invented entertainments for their
guests, games and revels for the villagers, and was the spirit of all.
In one of their retrospective hours, Osmonde had told her of the
thoughts he had dreamed on, as they had ridden homeward from the
encampment of the gipsies--of his fancies of the comrade she would make
for a man who lived a roving life. She had both laughed and wept over
the story, clinging to his breast as she had told her own, and of her
fear of his mere glance at her in those dark days, and that she had not
dared to sit alone but kept near her lord's side lest she should
ponder and remember what 'twas honest she should forget.

But afterwards she planned, for their fanciful pleasure, rambling long
jaunts when they rode or walked unattended, and romanced like children,
eating their simple food under broad greenwood trees or on the wide
moors with a