Anne's face between her hands. She looked on it
with deep interest; for this was the face that Dickon loved. A soft,
gentle face it was, which would have been pretty if it had been less
thin and wan with prison life, and less tired with suspense and care.
To her--

"The future was all dark,
And the past a troubled sea,
And Memory sat in her heart,
Wailing where Hope should be."

For Anne Mortimer was one of those hapless girls who are not motherless,
but what is far worse, unmothered. Her father, who lay in his bloody
grave in Ireland, she had loved dearly; but her mother was a mere
stranger somewhere in the world, who had never cared for her at all. To
the younger ones Anne herself had been the virtual mother; they had been
tended by her fostering care, but who save God had ever tended her?
Thus, from the time of her father's death, when she was eight years old,
Anne's life had been a flowerless, up-hill road, with nothing to look
forward to at the end. Was it any wonder that the face looked worn with
care, though only fifteen years had passed over it?

The sole breaks to the monotony of this weary life occurred when the
Court was at Windsor. Then the poor little prisoners were permitted to
come out of durance, and--still under strict surveillance--to join the
royal party. These times were delightful to the younger three, but they
would have been periods of unmixed pain to Anne, if it had not been for
the presence and uniform kindness of one person. She shuddered within
herself when the King or his Mentor the Archbishop addressed her,
shrinking from both with the instinctive aversion of a song-bird to a
serpent; but Richard of Conisborough spoke as no one else spoke to her--
so courteously, so gently, so kindly, that no room was left for fear.
No one had ever spoken so to this girl since her father died. And thus,
without the faintest suspicion of his feelings towards her, the lonely
maiden's imagination wove its sweet fancies around this hero of her
dreams, and she began unconsciously to look forward to the time when she
should meet him again. Well for her that it was so! for she was a "pale
meek blossom" unsuited for rough blasts, and the only ray of sunshine
which was ever to fall across her life lay in the love of Richard of
Conisborough.

"Who is it?" Anne repeated, in a rather less frightened tone.

"Hast thou forgot me, Nannette?" said Constance affectionately. "I am
the Lady Le Despen