Her teeth were chattering, and with a breath drawn like a wild sob of terror, the duchess threw her arm about her and drew her nearer.

“Sweet Anne,” she shuddered—­“sweet Anne—­come back—­you wander!”

“Nay, ’tis not wandering,” Anne said. “’Tis true, sister.  There is no night these years gone by I have not remembered it again—­and seen.  In the night after that you bore him there—­I prayed until the mid-hours, when all were sleeping fast—­and then I stole down—­in my bare feet, that none could hear me—­and at last I found my way in the black dark—­feeling the walls until I reached that farthest door in the stone—­and then I lighted my taper and oped it.”

“Anne!” cried the duchess—­“Anne, look through the tower window at the blueness of the sky—­at the blueness, Anne!” But drops of cold water had started out and stood upon her brow.

“He lay there in his grave—­it was a little black place with its stone walls—­his fair locks were tumbled,” Anne went on, whispering.  “The spot was black upon his brow—­and methought he had stopped mocking, and surely looked upon some great and awful thing which asked of him a question.  I knelt, and laid his curls straight, and his hands, and tried to shut his eyes, but close they would not, but stared at that which questioned.  And having loved him so, I kissed his poor cheek as his mother might have done, that he might not stand outside, having carried not one tender human thought with him.  And, oh, I prayed, sister—­I prayed for his poor soul with all my own.  ’If there is one noble or gentle thing he has ever done through all his life,’ I prayed, ’Jesus remember it—­Christ do not forget.’  We who are human do so few things that are noble—­oh, surely one must count.”

The duchess’s head lay near her sister’s breast, and she had fallen a-sobbing—­a-sobbing and weeping like a young broken child.

“Oh, brave and noble, pitiful, strong, fair soul!” she cried.  “As Christ loved you have loved, and He would hear your praying.  Since you so pleaded, He would find one thing to hang His mercy on.”

She lifted her fair, tear-streaming face, clasping her hands as one praying.

“And I—­and I,” she cried—­“have I not built a temple on his grave?  Have I not tried to live a fair life, and be as Christ bade me?  Have I not loved, and pitied, and succoured those in pain?  Have I not filled a great man’s days with bliss, and love, and wifely worship?  Have I not given him noble children, bred in high lovingness, and taught to love all things God made, even the very beasts that perish, since they, too, suffer as all do?  Have I left aught undone?  Oh, sister, I have so prayed that I left naught.  Even though I could not believe that there was One who, ruling all, could yet be pitiless as He is to some, I have prayed That—­which sure it seems must be, though we comprehend it not—­to teach me faith in something greater than my poor self, and not of earth.  Say this to Christ’s self when you are face to face—­say this to Him, I pray you!  Anne, Anne, look not so strangely through the window at the blueness of the sky, sweet soul, but look at me.”