How young she was--what a
girl, for all her height and bearing! and though he knew her years so
well he had never thought on her youth before. Would God he might have
swept her to his breast, crushing her in his arms and plunging into her
eyes, for as she turned and raised them to him he saw tears.
"Your ladyship," he exclaimed.
"My lord has been ill," she said. "He asked for you, and when he fell
asleep I came to get the morning air, hoping your Grace might come. I
must go back to him. Come, your Grace, with me."
_CHAPTER XXII_
_My Lady Dunstanwolde is Widowed_
There was a lady came back to town with the Earl and Countess, on their
return from Dunstan's Wolde, to which place they had gone after his
lordship's illness at Camylott. This lady was one of the two elder
sisters of her ladyship of Dunstanwolde, and 'twas said was her
favourite and treated with great tenderness by her. She was but a thin,
humble little woman--Mistress Anne Wildairs--and singularly plain and
timid to be the sister and chosen companion of one so brilliant and
full of fire. She was a pale creature with dull-hued heavy hair and
soft dull eyes, which followed her ladyship adoringly whensoever it
chanced they were in a room together.
"How can two beings so unlike be of the same blood?" people said; "and
what finds my lady in her that she does not lose patience at her
plainness and poor spirit?"
What she discovered in her, none knew as she herself did; but my Lord
Dunstanwolde understood the tie between them, and so his Grace of
Osmonde did, since an occasion when he had had speech with her ladyship
upon the subject.
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