Chapter 22 - Page 2

but a fierce, selfish thing, like a young she-wolf. Is a young
she-wolf honest?" with a half-laugh. "I was that, and feared nothing. I
ate and drank and sang and hunted poor beasts for my pleasure, and was
as wild as one of them myself. When I look back!"--she flung up a white
hand in a strange gesture--"When I look back!"

"Look forward!" said my lord Duke; "'tis the nobler thing."

"Yes," she repeated after him, fixing her great eyes gravely on his
face and speaking slowly. "'Tis sure the nobler thing."

And then he heard from her how, day by day, poor Anne had revealed to
her things strange--unselfishness, humble and tender love, and sweet
patience.

"At first I but wondered," she said, "and sate and would stare at her
while she talked. And then I pitied her who was so meek, and then I was
angered at Fortune, which had been so careless of her, and being a
rebel I began to defy Fate for her and swear I would set its cruelty at
naught and make her happy. Always," with quick leap of light in her
eyes, "I have hated that they call Fate, and defied it. There is a
thing in me," her closed hand on her breast, "which will not be beat
down! It _will_ not. If 'tis evil, Heaven help me--for it will not. But
Anne"--and she smiled again, her face changing as it always did when
she spoke her sister's name--"Anne I began to love and could not help
it, and she was the first."

This gentlewoman my lord Duke did not for some time see but on rare
occasions, at a distance. In her ladyship's great gilt coach he saw her
once or twice--a small, shrinking figure seated by her sister's side,
the modest pale brown of her lutestring robe a curious contrast to my
lady's velvets and brocades; at the play-house he saw her seated in the
Countess' box, at which a score of glasses were levelled, her face
lighted with wonder and pleasure at the brighter moments of the
tragedy, her soft eyes full of tears when the curtain fell upon the
corpse-strewn stage. If Mistress Anne had known that so great a
gentleman looked at her gentle face and with an actual tenderness near
to love itself, she would indeed have been a startled woman, yet 'twas
with a feeling like to this his Grace regarded her, thinking of her in
time as a sort of guardian angel. The sweetest words he had ever heard
from the lips of her he worshipped with such sad and hopeless passion,
were words spoken of Mistress Anne; the sweetest strange smile he had
ever seen her wear was worn when she spoke of this meek sister; the
sweetest womanly deeds he knew of her performing were thoughtful
gentlenesses done for the cherishing and protection of Anne.