The looker-on remembered the histories he had heard of the handsome hoyden whose male attire had been the Gloucestershire scandal, the Court beauty who in the midst of her triumphs had chosen to play gentle consort to an old husband, the Duchess who shone in the great world like the sun and who yet doffed her brocades and jewels to don serge and canvas and labour in Rag Yard and Slaughter Alley to rescue thieves and beggars and watch the mothers of their hapless children in their throes.  Ay, and more yet, to sit in the black condemned-cell at Newgate and hold the hand and pour courage into the soul of a shuddering wretch who in the cold grey of morning would dangle from a gallows tree.

“’Tis a strange nature,” he thought, “and has ever been so.  It has passed through some strange hours and some dark ones.  Yet to behold her——­”

There had come to her side a young couple, the woman with a child in her arms courtesying blushingly, her youthful husband grinning and pulling his forelock.

Her Grace took the infant and cuddled and kissed it, while its father and mother glowed with delight.

“Tis a fine boy, Betty,” she said. “’Tis bigger than the last one, Tom.  His christening finery is in the package here, and I will stand sponsor as before.”

“Mother,” said young John at her elbow, “may I not stand sponsor, too?”

She laughed and pulled his long love-locks.

“Ay, my lord Marquess,” she answered, “if his parents are willing to take such a young one.”

Mistress Anne sate by their guest, he holding her in great favour.  As the people came for their gifts she told him their names and stories.  Through weakness she walked about but little in these days, and the failing soldier liked her company, so she often sate near him in her lounging-chair and with gentle artfulness lured him into reminiscences of his past campaigns.  She was very frail to-day, and in her white robe, and with her large eyes which seemed to have outgrown her face, she looked like the wraith of a woman rather than a creature of flesh and blood.

“Those two her Grace rescued,” she said, as Betty and Tom Beck retired; “the one from woe, the other from cruel wickedness.  He had betrayed the poor child and deserted her, and ’twas her Grace who touched his heart and woke manhood in it, and made them happy man and wife.”

Then came an old woman leading a girl and boy, both fair and blooming and with blue eyes and fair curling locks.

“Are they both well and both happy, dame?” the Duchess asked.  “Yes, that they are, I see.  And I know they are both good.”

She took the girl’s face in both hands and smiled into it as she might have smiled at a flower, and then kissed her tenderly.  She gave her a little new gown and a pretty huswife stocked with implements to make it.  She put her hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked at him as his mother would have looked had she been tender of him.