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She was but a little lady, and now, as she lay in the large bed, her
face and form shrunken and drawn with suffering, she looked scarce
bigger than a child. In the brief days of her happiness those who
toasted her had called her Titania for her fairy slightness and
delicate beauty, but then her fair wavy locks had been of a length
that touched the ground when her woman unbound them, and she had had
the colour of a wild rose and the eyes of a tender little fawn. Sir
Jeoffry for a month or so had paid tempestuous court to her, and had
so won her heart with his dashing way of love-making and the
daringness of his reputation, that she had thought herself--being
child enough to think so--the luckiest young lady in the world that
his black eye should have fallen upon her with favour. Each year
since, with the bearing of each child, she had lost some of her
beauty. With each one her lovely hair fell out still more, her
wild-rose colour faded, and her shape was spoiled. She grew thin
and yellow, only a scant covering of the fair hair was left her, and
her eyes were big and sunken. Her marriage having displeased her
family, and Sir Jeoffry having a distaste for the ceremonies of
visiting and entertainment, save where his own cronies were
concerned, she had no friends, and grew lonelier and lonelier as the
sad years went by. She being so without hope and her life so
dreary, her children were neither strong nor beautiful, and died
quickly, each one bringing her only the anguish of birth and death.
This wintry morning her ninth lay slumbering by her side; the noise
of baying dogs and boisterous men had died away with the last sound
of the horses' hoofs; the little light which came into the room
through the ivied window was a faint yellowish red; she was cold,
because the fire in the chimney was but a scant, failing one; she
was alone--and she knew that the time had come for her death. This
she knew full well.
She was alone, because, being so disrespected and deserted by her
lord, and being of a timid and gentle nature, she could not command
her insufficient retinue of servants, and none served her as was
their duty. The old woman Sir Jeoffry had dubbed Mother Posset had
been her sole attendant at such times as these for the past five
years, because she would come to her for a less fee than a better
woman, and Sir Jeoffry had sworn he would not pay for wenches being
brought into the world. She was a slovenly, guzzling old crone, who
drank caudle from morning till night, and demanded good living as a
support during the performance of her trying duties; but these last
she contrived to make wondrous light, knowing that there was none to
reprove her.
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