was, as was but fitting, among them. The countess kept her own
apartments, and none but her sister, Mistress Anne, beheld her.

The night before the final ceremonies she spent sitting by her lord's
coffin, and to Anne it seemed that her mood was a stranger one, than ever
woman had before been ruled by. She did not weep or moan, and only once
kneeled down. In her sweeping black robes she seemed more a majestic
creature than she had ever been, and her beauty more that of a statue
than of a mortal woman. She sent away all other watchers, keeping only
her sister with her, and Anne observed in her a strange protecting
gentleness when she spoke of the dead man.

"I do not know whether dead men can feel and hear," she said. "Sometimes
there has come into my mind--and made me shudder--the thought that,
though they lie so still, mayhap they know what we do--and how they are
spoken of as nothings whom live men and women but wait a moment to thrust
away, that their own living may go on again in its accustomed way, or
perchance more merrily. If my lord knows aught, he will be grateful that
I watch by him to-night in this solemn room. He was ever grateful, and
moved by any tenderness of mine."

'Twas as she said, the room was solemn, and this almost to awfulness. It
was a huge cold chamber at best, and draped with black, and hung with
hatchments; a silent gloom filled it which made it like a tomb. Tall wax-
candles burned in it dimly, but adding to its solemn shadows with their
faint light; and in his rich coffin the dead man lay in his shroud, his
hands like carvings of yellowed ivory clasped upon his breast.

Mistress Anne dared not have entered the place alone, and was so overcome
at sight of the pinched nostrils and sunk eyes that she turned cold with