“You kept watch—­you?” the duchess gasped.

“Upon the stair which led to the servants’ place—­that I might stop them if—­if aught disturbed them, and they oped their doors—­that I might send them back, telling them—­it was I.”

Then stooped the duchess nearer to her, her hands clutching the coverlid, her eyes widening.

“Anne, Anne,” she cried, “you knew the awful thing that I would hide!  That too?  You knew that he was there!”

Anne lay upon her pillow, her own eyes gazing out through the ivy-hung window of her tower at the blue sky and the fair, fleecy clouds.  A flock of snow-white doves were flying back and forth across it, and one sate upon the window’s deep ledge and cooed.  All was warm and perfumed with summer’s sweetness.  There seemed naught between her and the uplifting blueness, and naught of the earth was near but the dove’s deep-throated cooing and the laughter of her Grace’s children floating upward from the garden of flowers below.

“I lie upon the brink,” she said—­“upon the brink, sister, and methinks my soul is too near to God’s pure justice to fear as human things fear, and judge as earth does.  She said I did no wrong.  Yes, I knew.”

“And knowing,” her sister cried, “you came to me that afternoon!”

“To stand by that which lay hidden, that I might keep the rest away.  Being a poor creature and timorous and weak—­”

“Weak! weak!” the duchess cried, amid a greater flood of streaming tears—­“ay, I have dared to call you so, who have the heart of a great lioness.  Oh, sweet Anne—­weak!”

“’Twas love,” Anne whispered.  “Your love was strong, and so was mine.  That other love was not for me.  I knew that my long woman’s life would pass without it—­for woman’s life is long, alas! if love comes not.  But you were love’s self, and I worshipped you and it; and to myself I said—­praying forgiveness on my knees—­that one woman should know love if I did not.  And being so poor and imperfect a thing, what mattered if I gave my soul for you—­and love, which is so great, and rules the world.  Look at the doves, sister, look at them, flying past the heavenly blueness—­and she said I did no wrong.”

Her hand was wet with tears fallen upon it, as her duchess sister knelt, and held and kissed it, sobbing.

“You knew, poor love, you knew!” she cried.

“Ay, all of it I knew,” Anne said—­“his torture of you and the madness of your horror.  And when he forced himself within the Panelled Parlour that day of fate, I knew he came to strike some deadly blow; and in such anguish I waited in my chamber for the end, that when it came not, I crept down, praying that somehow I might come between—­and I went in the room!”

“And there—­what saw you?” quoth the duchess, shuddering.  “Somewhat you must have seen, or you could not have known.”

“Ay,” said Anne, “and heard!” and her chest heaved.