“’Tis the name of a gentleman, your ladyship may be sure,” the beldam answered; “’tis always the name of a gentleman.  And this is one I know well, for I have heard more than one poor soul mumbling it and raving at him in her last hours.  One there was, and I knew her, a pretty rosy thing in her country days, not sixteen, and distraught with love for him, and lay in the street by his door praying him to take her back when he threw her off, until the watch drove her away.  And she was so mad with love and grief she killed her girl child when ‘twas born i’ the kennel, sobbing and crying that it should not live to be like her and bear others.  And she was condemned to death, and swung for it on Tyburn Tree.  And, Lord! how she cried his name as she jolted on her coffin to the gallows, and when the hangman put the rope round her shuddering little fair neck.  ‘Oh, John,’ screams she, ’John Oxon, God forgive thee!  Nay, ’tis God should be forgiven for letting thee to live and me to die like this.’  Aye, ’twas a bitter sight!  She was so little and so young, and so affrighted.  The hangman could scarce hold her.  I was i’ the midst o’ the crowd and cried to her to strive to stand still, ’twould be the sooner over.  But that she could not.  ‘Oh, John,’ she screams, ’John Oxon, God forgive thee!  Nay, ’tis God should be forgiven for letting thee to live and me to die like this!’”

Till the last hour of the poor creature who lay before her when she heard this thing, her Grace of Osmonde saw that she was tended, took her from her filthy hovel, putting her in a decent house and going to her day by day, until she received her last breath, holding her hand while the poor wench lay staring up at her beauteous face and her great deep eyes, whose lustrousness held such power to sustain, protect, and comfort.

“Be not afraid, poor soul,” she said, “be not afraid.  I will stay near thee.  Soon all will end in sleep, and if thou wakest, sure there will be Christ who died, and wipes all tears away.  Hear me say it to thee for a prayer,” and she bent low and said it soft and clear into the deadening ear, “He wipes all tears away—­He wipes all tears away.”

The great strength she had used in the old days to conquer and subdue, to win her will and to defend her way, seemed now a power but to protect the suffering and uphold the weak, and this she did, not alone in hovels but in the brilliant court and world of fashion, for there she found suffering and weakness also, all the more bitter and sorrowful since it dared not cry aloud.  The grandeur of her beauty, the elevation of her rank, the splendour of her wealth would have made her a protector of great strength, but that which upheld all those who turned to her was that which dwelt within the high soul of her, the courage and power of love for all things human which bore upon itself, as if upon an eagle’s outspread wings, the woes dragging themselves broken and halting upon earth.  The starving beggar in the kennel felt it, and, not knowing wherefore, drew a longer, deeper breath, as if of purer, more exalted air; the poor poet in his garret was fed by it, and having stood near or spoken to her, went back to his lair with lightening eyes and soul warmed to believe that the words his Muse might speak the world might stay to hear.