On her first coming my lord Duke had marked her and the sadness of her innocent, childish face and blue eyes, and had spoken of her to Anne, asking if she had met with some misfortune.

“A pretty, curly-headed creature such as she should be a village beauty and dimpling with smiles,” he said, “but the little thing looks sometimes as if she had wept a year.  Who has done her a wrong?”

Mistress Anne gave a little start and bent lower over her embroidery frame, but her Grace, who was in the apartment, answered for her.

“’Twas Sir John Oxon,” she answered, “who has wronged so many.”

“What!” Osmonde cried, “wrought he the poor thing’s ruin?”

“No,” the Duchess replied; “but would have done it, and she, poor child, all innocent, believing herself an honest wife.  He had so planned it, but Fate saved her!”

“A mock marriage,” says the Duke, “and she saved from it!  How?”

“Because the day she went to him to be married, as he had told her, he was not at his lodgings, and did not return.”

“’Twas the very day he disappeared—­the day you saw him?” Osmonde exclaimed.

“Yes,” was the answer given, as her Grace crossed the room.  “And ’twas because I had seen him that the poor thing came to me with her story—­and I cared for her.”

She, too, had been sitting at her embroidery frame, and had crossed the room for silks, which lay upon the table near to Mistress Anne.  As she laid her hand upon them she looked down and uttered a low exclamation, springing to her sister’s side.

“Anne, love!” she cried.  “Nay, Anne!”

Mistress Anne’s small, worn face had dropped so low over her frame that it at last lay upon it, showing white against the silken roses so gaily broidered there.  She was in a dead swoon.

Later Osmonde heard further details of this story—­of how the poor child, having no refuge in the great city, had dared at last to go to Dunstanwolde House in the wild hope that her ladyship, who had last seen Sir John, might tell her if he had let drop any word concerning his journey—­if he had made one.  She had at first hung long about the servants’ entrance, watching the workmen who were that day walling in the wing of black cellars my lady had wished to close before she left the place, and at length, in desperation, had appealed to a young stone-mason, with a good-humoured countenance, and he had interceded for her with a lacquey passing by.

“But had I not spoke Sir John’s name,” the girl said when my lord Duke spoke kindly to her of her story and her Grace’s goodness; “had I not spoke his name, the man would not have carried my message.  But he said she would see me if I had news of Sir John Oxon.  He blundered, your Grace, thinking I came from Sir John himself, and told her Grace ’twas so.  And she bade him bring me to her.”