A Lady of Quality Part 30

"Anne, Anne," she whispered, "must he know-my Gerald? Must I-must I tell him all? If so I must, I will-upon my knees."

The doves came flying downward from the blue, and lighted on the window stone and cooed-Anne's answer was as low as her soft breath and her still eyes were filled with joy at that she saw but which another could not.

"Nay," she breathed. "Tell him not. What need? Wait, and let G.o.d tell him-who understands."

Then did her soft breath stop, and she lay still, her eyes yet open and smiling at the blossoms, and the doves who sate upon the window-ledge and lowly cooed and cooed.

'Twas her d.u.c.h.ess sister who clad her for her last sleeping, and made her chamber fair-the hand of no other touched her; and while 'twas done the tower chamber was full of the golden sunshine, and the doves ceased not to flutter about the window, and coo as if they spoke lovingly to each other of what lay within the room.

Then the children came to look, their arms full of blossoms and flowering sprays. They had been told only fair things of death, and knowing but these fair things, thought of it but as the opening of a golden door. They entered softly, as entering the chamber of a queen, and moving tenderly, with low and gentle speech, spread all their flowers about the bed-laying them round her head, on her breast, and in her hands, and strewing them thick everywhere.

"She lies in a bower and smiles at us," one said. "She hath grown beautiful like you, mother, and her face seems like a white star in the morning."

"She loves us as she ever did," the fair child Daphne said; "she will never cease to love us, and will be our angel. Now have we an angel of our own."

When the duke returned, who had been absent since the day before, the d.u.c.h.ess led him to the tower chamber, and they stood together hand in hand and gazed at her peace.

"Gerald," the d.u.c.h.ess said, in her tender voice, "she smiles, does not she?"

"Yes," was Osmonde's answer-"yes, love, as if at G.o.d, who has smiled at herself-faithful, tender woman heart!"

The hand which he held in his clasp clung closer. The other crept to his shoulder and lay there tremblingly.

"How faithful and how tender, my Gerald," Clorinda said, "I only know. She is my saint-sweet Anne, whom I dared treat so lightly in my poor wayward days. Gerald, she knows all my sins, and to-day she has carried them in her pure hands to G.o.d and asked His mercy on them. She had none of her own."

"And so having done, dear heart, she lies amid her flowers, and smiles," he said, and he drew her white hand to press it against his breast.

While her body slept beneath soft turf and flowers, and that which was her self was given in G.o.d's heaven, all joys for which her earthly being had yearned, even when unknowing how to name its longing, each year that pa.s.sed made more complete and splendid the lives of those she so had loved. Never, 'twas said, had woman done such deeds of gentleness and shown so sweet and generous a wisdom as the great d.u.c.h.ess. None who were weak were in danger if she used her strength to aid them; no man or woman was a lost thing whom she tried to save: such tasks she set herself as no lady had ever given herself before; but 'twas not her way to fail-her will being so powerful, her brain so clear, her heart so purely n.o.ble. Pauper and prince, n.o.ble and hind honoured her and her lord alike, and all felt wonder at their happiness. It seemed that they had learned life's meaning and the honouring of love, and this they taught to their children, to the enriching of a long and n.o.ble line. In the ripeness of years they pa.s.sed from earth in as beauteous peace as the sun sets, and upon a tablet above the resting-place of their ancestors there are inscribed lines like these:-

"Here sleeps by her husband the purest and n.o.blest lady G.o.d e'er loved, yet the high and gentle deeds of her chaste sweet life sleep not, but live and grow, and so will do so long as earth is earth."