“’Twas wasted rage,” she said to those about her.  “The poor light fools were not worth ill-usage.”

The next day the Duke heard the tale, which had flown abroad over the town.  His very soul was thrilled by it and that it told him, and he went to her Grace and poured forth to her a passion of love that was touched with awe.

“I could see you!” he cried, “when they told the story to me.  I could see you as you stood there and held the wild beasts at bay.  ’Twas that I saw in your child-eyes when you rode past me in the hunting-field; ’twas that fire which held them back, and the great sweet soul of you which has reached them in their dens and made you worshipped of them.”

“Twas that they know me,” she answered; “’twas that I have stood by their sides in their blackest hours.  I have seen their children born.  I have helped their old ones and their young through death.  Some I have saved from the gallows.  Some I have—­” she stopped and hung her head as if black memories overpowered her.

He knew what she had left unfinished.

“You have been—­to comfort those who lie in Newgate—­at their last extremity?” he ended for her.

“Ay,” she answered.  “The one who will show kindness to them in those awful hours they worship as God’s self.  There was a poor fellow I once befriended there”—­she spoke slowly and her voice shook.  “He was condemned—­for taking a man’s life.  The last night—­before I left him—­he knelt to me and swore—­he had meant not murder.  He had struck in rage—­one who had tortured him with taunts till he went raving.  He struck, and the man fell—­and he had killed him!  And now must hang.”

“Good God!” cried my lord Duke.  “By chance!  In frenzy!  Not knowing!  And he died for it?”

“Ay,” she answered, her great eyes on his and wide with horror, “on Tyburn Tree!”

CHAPTER XXXI

Their Graces Keep their Wedding Day at Camylott

“She came to Court at last, my Lord Duke,” said his Grace of Marlborough.  “She came at last—­as I felt sure ’twas Fate she should.”

’Twas at Camylott he said this, where he had come in those days which darkened about him when, royal favour lost, the acclamations of a fickle public stilled, its clamour of applause almost forgot and denied by itself, his glory as statesman, commander, warrior seemed to sink beneath the horizon like a sunset in a winter sky.  His splendid frame shattered by the stroke of illness, his heart bereaved, his great mind dulled and saddened, there were few friends faithful to him, but my Lord Duke of Osmonde, who had never sought his favour or required his protection, who had often held views differing from his own and hidden none of them, was among the few in whose company he found solace and pleasure.

“I see you as I was,” he would say.  “Nay, rather as I might have been had Nature given me a thing she gave to you and withheld from John Churchill.  You were the finer creature and less disturbed by poor worldly dreams.”