beauty of a white marble statue suddenly changed to burnished gold
might be beauty still, but of different expression and meaning. There
is always something devilish in the too great profusion of precious
metal--something that suggests greed, spoil, gain, and all that he
lives for who strives for wealth; and sometimes, by the mere absence of
gold or silver, there is dignity, simplicity, even solemnity.

Above the setting sun, tens of thousands of little clouds, as light and
fleecy as swan's-down, some dazzling bright, some rosy-coloured, some,
far to eastward, already purple, streamed across the pale sky in the
mystic figure of a vast wing, as if some great archangel hovered below
the horizon, pointing one jewelled pinion to the firmament, the other
down and unseen in his low flight. Just above the feathery oak trees,
behind which the sun had dipped, long streamers of red and yellow and
more imperial purple shot out to right and left. Above the moat's broad
water, the quick dark May-flies chased one another, in dashes of
straight lines, through the rosy haze, and as the sinking sun shot a
last farewell glance between the oak trees on the knoll, the lady stood
still and turned her smooth features to the light. There was curiosity
in her look, expectation, and some anxiety, but there was no longing. A
month, had passed since Raymond Warde had ridden away with his half-
dozen squires and servants to do homage to the Empress Maud. Her court
was, indeed, little more than a show, and Stephen ruled in wrongful
possession of the land; but here and there a sturdy and honest knight
was still to be found, who might, perhaps, be brought to do homage for
his lands to King Stephen, but who would have felt that he was a
traitor, and no true man, had he not rendered the homage of fealty to
the unhappy lady who was his rightful sovereign. And one of these was
Raymond Warde, whose great-grandfather had ridden with Robert the Devil
to Jerusalem, and had been with him when he died in Nicaea; and his