"Of one land, lady, it is true," said the girl, gently. "Yes! daughters of one _fair_ land, for even to the slave England is very beautiful and dear, even as to you she is _free_. But for us, who were once her first-born and her favorites, that magic word has passed away, that charm has ceased, forever. For us, in free England's wide-rejoicing acres, there is no spot free, save the six feet of earth that shall receive our bodies, when the soul shall be a slave's no longer. Lady, lady, alas! noble lady, if one God made us both of one clay, that shall go downward to mingle with the common sod, and of one spirit that shall mount upward, when the weariness and woe shall be at an end forever, man has set a great gulf between us, that we can not pass over it at all, to come the one unto the other. Our wants may be the same, while we are here below, and our hopes may be the same heavenward; but there all sameness ends between us. My joys can not be your joys, and God forbid that my sorrows should be yours, either. Our hearts may not feel, our heads may not think, in unison, even if our flesh be of one texture, and our souls of one spirit. You are good, and gentle, and kind, lady, but you may never understand what it is to be such as I." She ceased, but she ceased weeping also, and seemed lost in deep thought, and almost forgetful of herself and her surroundings, as she remained on her knees by the bedside of Guendolen, with her head drooping from her fair bended neck, and her embrowned but shapely hands folded in her lap. The lady looked at her silently for a few moments, partly in sympathy, partly, it must be said, in wonder. New ideas were beginning to be awakened in her mind, and a perception of something, which had never before dawned upon her, became palpable and strong. That which we behold, and have beheld daily perhaps for years, naturally becomes so usual and customary in our eyes, that we cease to regard it as any thing but as a fact, of which we have never seen and scarcely can conceive any thing to the contrary--that we look at it as a part of that system which we call nature, and of which we never question the right or the wrong, the injustice or the justice, but, knowing that it _is_, never think of inquiring wherefore it is, and whether it ought to be. Thus it was with Guendolen de Taillebois. She had been accustomed, during all her life, to see Saxons as serfs, and rarely in any other capacity; for the franklins and thanes who had retained their independence, their freedom, and a portion of their ancestral acres, were few in numbers, and held but little intercourse with their Norman neighbors, being regarded by them as rude and semi-barbarous inferiors, while they, in turn, regarded them as cruel and insolent usurpers and oppressors.