Conscience had come in with her questionings, and her discernings and her dividings. I was not sure whether God was pleased with me or with any of us. Even when I looked at the garlanded May-pole, I thought of the old tree in Eden with its pleasant fruit, which I had embroidered with a serpent coiled round it, darting out his forked tongue at Eve. I wondered whether if my eyes were opened I should see him there, writhing among the hawthorn garlands, or hissing envenomed words into the ear of our Tib's Margery as she sat in her royal bower of green boughs crowned with flowers, or gliding in and out among the dancers, as hand in hand they moved singing around the May-pole, wreathing and unwreathing the long garland which united them, and making low reverences, as they passed, to their blushing Queen. I wondered whether the whole thing had some mysterious connection with idolatry, and heaven itself were after all watching us with grieved displeasures like Aunt Dorothy, and secretly preparing fiery serpents, or a rain of fire and brimstone, or a thunder storm, or whatever came instead of fiery serpents and fire and brimstone in these days when there were no more miracles. These thoughts, however, all vanished when the family appeared from the Hall. The Lady Lucy was borne by two men in a sedan-chair which she had brought from London, a thing I had never seen before. It so happened that I had never seen the Lady Lucy until that day. The family had been much about the court, and on the few occasions on which they had spent any time at the Hall, the Lady Lucy's health had been too feeble to admit of her attending at the parish church with the rest of the family. From the moment, therefore, that Sir Walter handed her out of the chair and seated her on cushions prepared for her, I could not take my eyes from her, not even to look at Lettice. So queenly she appeared to me, such a perfection of grace and dignity and beauty. Her complexion was fair like Lettice's, but very delicate and pale, like a shell; and her hair, still brown and abundant, was arranged in countless small ringlets around her face. On her neck and her forehead there was a brilliant sparkle and a glitter, which must, of course, have been from jewels; and her dress had a sheen and a gloss, and a delicate changing of gorgeous colours on it which must have been that of velvet and brocade and rare laces. But in my eyes she sat wrapped in a kind of halo of unearthly glory. I no more thought of resolving it into the texture of any earthly looms than if she had been a lily or a star. All around her seemed to belong to her, like the moonbeams to the moon or the leaves to a flower. Not her dress only, but the green leaves which bent lovingly down to her, and the flowery turf which seemed to kiss her feet. If I thought of any comparison, it was Aunt Gretel's fairy-tale of the princess with the three magic robes, enclosed in the magic