"The Duchess was still asleep this morning, fairly worn out, as you may suppose, when a great noise awoke her. She got up and went to Dymphna, and learned it was the Duke's trumpets. Then she went to the window, and, seeing few people in the streets to welcome him, inquired why this was. Dymphna broke down at that, and told her what was happening to you, and that you were to die at that very hour. She went out straightway, without covering her head,--you know how impetuous she is,--and flung herself on her knees in the mud before the Duke's horse as he entered. He knew her, and the rest you can guess." Can guess? Ah, what happiness it was! Outside, the sun fell hotly on the steep red roofs, with their rows of casements, and on the sleepy square, in which knots of people still lingered, talking of the morning's events. I could see below me the guard which Duke William, shrewdly mistrusting the Sub-dean, had posted in front of the house, nominally to do the Duchess honor. I could hear in the next room the cheerful voices of my friends. What happiness it was to live! What happiness to be loved! How very, very good and beautiful and glorious a world, seemed the world to me on that old May morning in that quaint German town which we had entered so oddly! As I turned from the window full of thankfulness, my eyes met those of Mistress Anne, who was sitting on the far side of the sick man's couch, the baby in a cradle beside her. The risk and exposure of the last week had made a deeper mark upon her than upon any of us. She was paler, graver, older, more of a woman and less, much less, of a girl. And she looked very ill. Her eyes, in particular, seemed to have grown larger, and as they dwelt on me now there was a strange and solemn light in them, under which I grew uneasy. "You have been wonderfully preserved," she said presently, speaking dreamily, and as much to herself as to me. "I have, indeed," I answered, thinking she referred only to my escape of the morning. But she did not. "There was, firstly, the time on the river when you were hurt with the oar," she continued, gazing absently at me, her hands in her lap; "and then the night when you saw Clarence with Dymphna." "Or, rather, saw him without her," I interposed, smiling. It was strange that she should mention it as a fact, when at the time she had so scolded me for making the statement. "And then," she continued, disregarding my interruption, "there was the time when you were stabbed in the passage; and again when you had the skirmish by the river; and then to-day you were within a minute of death. You have been wonderfully preserved!" "I have," I assented thoughtfully. "The more as I suspect that I have to thank Master Clarence for all these little adventures." "Strange--very strange!" she muttered, removing her eyes from me that she might fix them on the floor. "What is strange?"