bid her weep there, to seek to comfort, to soothe, by mingling her tears with hers, to protect, to hide her misery from all save her mother’s eye—­to feel this till every pulse throbbed as to threaten her with death, and yet to breathe no word, to give no sign that such things were, lest she should endanger that precious one yet more.  She dared not breathe one question of the many crowding on her heart, she could but gaze and feel.  She had thought, when, they told her that her boy was dead, that she had caused his death, there was little more of misery fate could weave, but at that moment even Alan was forgotten.  It was her own wretchedness she had had then to bear, for he was at rest; but now it was the anguish of that dearer self, her sole remaining child—­and oh, a mother’s heart can better bear its individual woes than those that crash a daughter to the earth.

A sudden rush amidst the crowd, where a movement could take place, the heavy roll of muffled drums, and the yet deeper, more wailing toll of the funeral bell, announced that the prisoner had left the dungeon, and irresistibly the gaze of the countess turned from her child to seek him; perchance it was well, for the preservation of her composure, that the intervening crowd prevented her beholding him till he stood upon the scaffold, for hardly could she have borne unmoved the sight of that noble and gallant form—­beloved alike as the friend of her son, the betrothed of her daughter, the brother of her king—­degraded of all insignia of rank, chained to the hurdle, and dragged as the commonest, the vilest criminal, exposed to the mocking gaze of thousands, to the place of execution.  She saw him not thus, and therefore she knew not wherefore the features of Agnes had become yet more rigid, bore yet more the semblance of chiselled marble.  He stood at length upon the scaffold, as calmly majestic in his bearing as if he had borne no insult, suffered no indignity.  His beautiful hair had been arranged with care on either side his face, and still fell in its long, rich curls, about his throat; and so beautiful, so holy was the expression of his perfect features, that the assembled crowds hushed their very breath in admiration and in awe; it seemed as if the heaven, on whose threshold he stood, had already fixed its impress on his brow.  Every eye was upon him, and all perceived that holy calmness was for one brief minute disturbed; but none, save three of those who marked it, knew or even guessed the cause.  The countess had watched his glance, as at first composedly it had wandered over the multitude beneath and around him, and she saw it rest on that one face, which, in its sculptured misery, stood alone amidst thousands, and she alone perceived the start of agony that sight occasioned, but speedily even that emotion passed; he looked from that loved face up to the heaven on which his hopes were fixed, in whose care for her he trusted—­and that look was prayer.  She saw him as he knelt in prayer,