rning to fold
her to her maternal bosom, to bid her weep there, to seek to comfort, to
soothe, by mingling her tears with hers, to protect, to hide her misery
from all save her mother's eye--to feel this till every pulse throbbed
as to threaten her with death, and yet to breathe no word, to give no
sign that such things were, lest she should endanger that precious one
yet more. She dared not breathe one question of the many crowding on her
heart, she could but gaze and feel. She had thought, when, they told her
that her boy was dead, that she had caused his death, there was little
more of misery fate could weave, but at that moment even Alan was
forgotten. It was her own wretchedness she had had then to bear, for he
was at rest; but now it was the anguish of that dearer self, her sole
remaining child--and oh, a mother's heart can better bear its individual
woes than those that crash a daughter to the earth.

A sudden rush amidst the crowd, where a movement could take place, the
heavy roll of muffled drums, and the yet deeper, more wailing toll of
the funeral bell, announced that the prisoner had left the dungeon, and
irresistibly the gaze of the countess turned from her child to seek him;
perchance it was well, for the preservation of her composure, that the
intervening crowd prevented her beholding him till he stood upon the
scaffold, for hardly could she have borne unmoved the sight of that
noble and gallant form--beloved alike as the friend of her son, the
betrothed of her daughter, the brother of her king--degraded of all
insignia of rank, chained to the hurdle, and dragged as the commonest,
the vilest criminal, exposed to the mocking gaze of thousands, to the
place of execution. She saw him not thus, and therefore she knew not
wherefore the features of Agnes had become yet more rigid, bore yet more
the semblance of chiselled marble. He stood at length upon the scaffold,
as calmly majestic in his bearing as if he had borne no insult, suffered
no indignity. His beautiful hair had been arranged with care on either
side his face, and still fell in its long, rich curls, about his throat;
and so beautiful, so holy was the expression of his perfect features,
that the assembled crowds hushed their very breath in admiration and in
awe; it seemed as if the heaven, on whose threshold he stood, had
already fixed its impress on his brow. Every eye was upon him, and all
perceived that holy calmness was for one brief minute distur