Somerset paused a moment in his walk, impelled by the persuasive but sad tones of his child; but confinement had made him irritable; so, extricating his disordered cloak from the slight grasp which she had fixed upon it, he pushed the book from him with a violence which sent it crashing to the floor again, and resumed his restless occupation. The book had fallen upon the flags, with its broad leaves downward, and crushed beneath the heavy binding, that, with the ringing of the heavy clasps, as they struck the stones, brought another person into the room, but so changed, so thin, and broken-hearted in appearance, that few persons who had seen the dignified, proud, and lovely Duchess of Somerset, in her high estate, could have recognised her as she stood within the sickly atmosphere of her husband’s dungeon. The gentle lady moved across the room, her rich, but now soiled, vestments sweeping the dusty floor as she passed; while her daughter was patiently occupied in smoothing the pages which had been injured in their fall, and in brushing away the dust which they had gathered, she approached her husband, placed a hand upon his arm, and looked with a sad smile into his face. “The apartment within is less gloomy than this,” she said; “come and sit with us; you, who never failed to share the sunshine of life with us, should not thus brood alone, now that sorrow has befallen us. Come!” Somerset turned abruptly from his noble wife, and to conceal the emotions her sweet, patient manner had awakened, rather than from continued moodiness of spirit, he still paced up and down the darkest part of his dungeon, with all the appearance of continued irritation, for he was ashamed of the tears which, in spite of himself, sprang to his eyes on witnessing his gentle and yet proud wife so fallen and so patient in her ruin.