“Look forward!” said my lord Duke; “’tis the nobler thing.”

“Yes,” she repeated after him, fixing her great eyes gravely on his face and speaking slowly. “’Tis sure the nobler thing.”

And then he heard from her how, day by day, poor Anne had revealed to her things strange—­unselfishness, humble and tender love, and sweet patience.

“At first I but wondered,” she said, “and sate and would stare at her while she talked.  And then I pitied her who was so meek, and then I was angered at Fortune, which had been so careless of her, and being a rebel I began to defy Fate for her and swear I would set its cruelty at naught and make her happy.  Always,” with quick leap of light in her eyes, “I have hated that they call Fate, and defied it.  There is a thing in me,” her closed hand on her breast, “which will not be beat down!  It will not.  If ’tis evil, Heaven help me—­for it will not.  But Anne”—­and she smiled again, her face changing as it always did when she spoke her sister’s name—­“Anne I began to love and could not help it, and she was the first.”

This gentlewoman my lord Duke did not for some time see but on rare occasions, at a distance.  In her ladyship’s great gilt coach he saw her once or twice—­a small, shrinking figure seated by her sister’s side, the modest pale brown of her lutestring robe a curious contrast to my lady’s velvets and brocades; at the play-house he saw her seated in the Countess’ box, at which a score of glasses were levelled, her face lighted with wonder and pleasure at the brighter moments of the tragedy, her soft eyes full of tears when the curtain fell upon the corpse-strewn stage.  If Mistress Anne had known that so great a gentleman looked at her gentle face and with an actual tenderness near to love itself, she would indeed have been a startled woman, yet ’twas with a feeling like to this his Grace regarded her, thinking of her in time as a sort of guardian angel.  The sweetest words he had ever heard from the lips of her he worshipped with such sad and hopeless passion, were words spoken of Mistress Anne; the sweetest strange smile he had ever seen her wear was worn when she spoke of this meek sister; the sweetest womanly deeds he knew of her performing were thoughtful gentlenesses done for the cherishing and protection of Anne.  “Anne was the first creature to teach me what love meant,” she said.

“I could have taught you, Heart,” was his secret thought; “I could have taught you, but since I might not, God’s blessing on this dear soul whose tender humbleness was your first lesson.”  Yet Mistress Anne he did not encounter in person until the occurring of the sad event which changed for him the whole face of the universe itself, and which took place a year or more after his kinsman’s marriage.  The resolution his Grace had made the day he waited at Camylott for his guests’ arrival, he had kept to the letter, and this often to the wonder of his lordship of Dunstanwolde, who found cause for