soft weird music
from the church bells in the silver steeples of the doomed cities: yea,
and there have been so pure, and our Lady hath shown them such grace,
that they have seen the very self streets down at the bottom of the sea,
where the dead walk and speak as they did of old--the knights and the
ladies, as in the days gone by, when Arthur was King, a thousand years
ago, when he held his court in the palaces of the lost land. And the
Islands of Scilly, as men say, be the summits of the mountains, that
towered once hoary and barren over the green forests and the rich
cities." [This story is a veritable legend of the Middle Ages.]

The story was being told to an uncritical and unchronological audience,
or Dame Agnes might have received a gentle intimation that she was
antedating the reign of King Arthur by the short period of two hundred
years.

The silence which followed--for both the little girls were meditating on
the story, and Dame Agnes's flax was just then entangled in a
troublesome knot--was broken, suddenly and very thoroughly, by the
unexpected entrance, quiet though it were, of the Countess herself.
Dame Agnes gave no heed to her broken thread, but rose instantly,
distaff in hand, with a low reverence; Constance rubbed her sleepy eyes
and slowly descended from her great chair; while Maude, recalled to the
present, dropped her lowest courtesy and stood waiting.

There was a peculiar air about the Countess Isabel, which suggested to
bystanders the idea of a tired, worn-out woman. It was not discontent,
not irritability, not exactly even sadness; it was the tone of one who
had never fitted rightly into the place assigned to her, and who never
felt at home. Though it disappeared when she spoke, yet as soon as her
features were at rest it came again. It was little wonder that her face
wore such an expression, for she was the daughter of a murdered father
and a slandered mother, and the wife of a man who valued her very highly
as the Infanta of Castilla, but as Isabel his wife not at all. During
her early years, she had sought rest and comfort in the world. She
plunged wildly into every manner of dissipation and pleasure; like
Solomon, she withheld not her heart from any good; and like Solomon's,
her verdict at the close was "Vanity and vexation of spirit." And
then--just when she had arrived at the conclusion that there was nothing
upon earth worth living for--when she had "come to the end of
everythi