“I can carry to them food and raiment,” said Mistress Anne, wondering at her, “but when I try to talk with them I am afraid and have no words.  But you, sister—­when you sate by that poor distraught young woman yesterday and talked to her of her husband who had met such sudden death—­you knew what to say, and in the midst of her agony she turned in her bed and lay and stared at you and listened.”

“Yes, I knew,” said my lady—­her eyes shining.  “She is passing through what I might pass through if——!  Those two poor souls—­rustics, and ignorant, who to greater people seem like cattle—­they were man and woman who had loved and mated.  They could not have told their joy or the meaning of it.  I could—­I could!  And now her mate is gone—­and the world is empty, and she is driven mad.  I know, I know!  Only another woman who knew could have uttered words she would have listened to.”

“What—­what did you say?” said Mistress Anne—­and almost gasped, for my lady looked so full of tragic truth and passion, and how could she know? being only the widow of an old man whom she had but loved with kindness, as if she had been his daughter?  ’Twas not through her loss of my Lord Dunstanwolde she knew.  And yet, know she did, ’twas plain.

And her answer was the strangest, daring proof.

“I said to her—­almost fiercely, though I spoke beneath my breath, ’He hath not left thee:  Thou wouldst not have left him.  Thou couldst not.  Remember!  Think!  Thou canst not see him, but thee he sees, and loves—­loves, I tell thee, as he did two weeks since.  Perhaps he holds thee in his arms and cries to thee to hear him.  Perhaps ’tis he who speaks in these words of mine.  When we have loved them and they us, death is not strong enough to part us.  Love holds too close.  Listen?  He is here!’”

“Heaven’s mercy!” cried gentle Mistress Anne, the tears running down her cheeks.  “There seems no Death, when you talk thus, sister—­no Death.”

“There is none,” said my lady, “when Love comes.  When Love has come, there is naught else in Nature’s universe, for it is stronger than all.”

And ’twas as if she were some prophetess who spoke, her face and eyes glowed with such fire and solemness.  But Mistress Anne, gazing at her, thrilled to her heart’s core, had a strange sense of fear, wondering whence this mood had come, how it had grown, and what it might bring forth in the unknown future.

The custom of the time held that a widowed lady should mourn retired a year, but ’twas near two before her ladyship of Dunstanwolde came forth from her seclusion, and casting her weeds returned to town.  And my Lord Duke of Osmonde had come again to Camylott when the news was spread.