" replied Maude, lifting her white face. "Master
Sheriff, she was dying ere you came to prison her,--on a sendel thread
[a linen cloth of the finest quality] hung her life: but ere you touched
her, God snapped yon thread, and set her free."

Ay, what matter?--though they seized on the poor relic of mortality
which had once been Constance Le Despenser?--though the mean vengeance
was taken of leaving her coffin unburied for four dreary years? "After
that, they had no more that they could do." It was only the withered
leaves that were left in their hands; the White Rose was free.

"What shall become of the young ladies, Master Sheriff?"

"Nay," growled the surly official, "the hen being departed, I lack
nought of the chicks. They may go whither it list them; only this
Castle and all therein is confiscate."

Maude turned to Isabel, now a tall statuesque maiden of sixteen years.

"I shall send to my Lord, of force," she answered coldly, "and desire
that he come and fetch me hence."

"And your sister, the Lady Alianora?"

The child was kneeling by the side of her dead mother, wrapped in
unutterable grief. Isabel cast a contemptuous glance upon her.

"No sister of mine!" she said in the same tone. "I cannot be burdened
with nameless childre."

For an instant Maude's indignation rose above both her discretion and
her sorrow. She cried--"Girl, God pardon you those cruel words!"--but
then with a strong effort she bridled her tongue, and sitting down by
the bed, drew the sobbing child's head upon her bosom.

"My poor homeless darling! doth none want thee, my dove?--not even thine
own mother's daughter?--Bertram, good husband, thou wilt not let
[hinder] me?--Sweet, come then with us, and be our daughter--to whom
beside thee God hath given none. Meseemeth as though He now saith,
`Take this child and nurse it for Me.' Lord, so be it!"

At the end of those four years, men's revenge was satiated, and
permission was given for the funeral of the unburied coffin. But they
laid her, as they had laid her son, far from the scene of her home, and
from the graves of her beloved. The long unused royal vault in the
Benedictine Abbey of Reading, in which the latest burial had taken place
nearly two hundred years before, was opened to receive its last tenant.
There she sleeps calmly, waiting for the resurrection morning.

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Three historical tableaux wi