From the hour she stayed the last moments of John Oxon’s victim she set herself a work to do.  None knew it but herself at first, and later Anne, for ’twas done privately.  From the hag who had told her of the poor girl’s hanging upon Tyburn Tree, she learned things by close questioning, which to the old woman’s dull wit seemed but the curiousness of a great lady, and from others who stood too deep in awe of her to think of her as a mere human being, she gathered clues which led her far in the tracing of the evils following one wicked, heartless life.  Where she could hear of man, woman, or child on whom John Oxon’s sins had fallen, or who had suffered wrong by him, there she went to help, to give light, to give comfort and encouragement.  Strangely, as it seemed to them, and as if done by the hand of Heaven, the poor tradesmen he had robbed were paid their dues, youth he had led into evil ways was checked mysteriously and set in better paths; women he had dragged downward were given aid and chance of peace or happiness; children he had cast upon the world, unfathered, and with no prospect but the education of the gutter, and a life of crime, were cared for by a powerful unseen hand.  The pretty country girl saved by his death, protected by her Grace, and living innocently at Dunstanwolde, memory being merciful to youth, forgot him, gained back her young roses, and learned to smile and hope as though he had been but a name.

“Since ’twas I who killed him,” said her Grace to her inward soul, “’tis I must live his life which I took from him, and making it better I may be forgiven—­if there is One who dares to say to the poor thing He made, ’I will not forgive.’”

Surely it was said there had never been lives so beautiful and noble as those the Duke of Osmonde and his lady lived as time went by.  The Tower of Camylott, where they had spent the first months of their wedded life, they loved better than any other of their seats, and there they spent as much time as their duties of Court and State allowed them.  It was indeed a splendid and beautiful estate, the stately tower being built upon an eminence, and there rolling out before it the most lovely land in England, moorland and hills, thick woods and broad meadows, the edge of the heather dipping to show the soft silver of the sea.

Here was this beauteous woman chatelaine and queen, wife of her husband as never before, he thought, had wife blessed and glorified the existence of mortal man.  All her great beauty she gave to him in tender, joyous tribute; all her great gifts of mind and wit and grace it seemed she valued but as they were joys to him; in his stately households in town and country she reigned a lovely empress, adored and obeyed with reverence by every man or woman who served her and her lord.  Among the people on his various estates she came and went a tender goddess of benevolence.  When she appeared amid them in the first months of her wedded life, the humble souls regarded her with awe not unmixed with fear, having heard such wild stories of her youth at her father’s house, and of her proud state and bitter wit in the great London world when she had been my Lady Dunstanwolde; but when she came among them all else was forgotten in their wonder at her graciousness and noble way.