from the toy-shops. She will marry no man who cannot make her at least a
countess, and she would take him but because there was not a duke at
hand. We know her, and her beauty's ways."

But they did not know her; none knew her, save herself.

In the west wing, which grew more bare and ill-furnished as things wore
out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler. She was so
thin in two months' time, that her soft, dull eyes looked twice their
natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people. One day, indeed,
as she sat at work in her sister's room, Clorinda being there at the
time, the beauty, turning and beholding her face suddenly, uttered a
violent exclamation.

"Why look you at me so?" she said. "Your eyes stand out of your head
like a new-hatched, unfeathered bird's. They irk me with their strange
asking look. Why do you stare at me?"

"I do not know," Anne faltered. "I could not tell you, sister. My eyes
seem to stare so because of my thinness. I have seen them in my mirror."

"Why do you grow thin?" quoth Clorinda harshly. "You are not ill."

"I--I do not know," again Anne faltered. "Naught ails me. I do not
know. For--forgive me!"

Clorinda laughed.

"Soft little fool," she said, "why should you ask me to forgive you? I
might as fairly ask you to forgive _me_, that I keep my shape and show no