The night before the final ceremonies she spent sitting by her lord’s coffin², and to Anne it seemed that her mood was a stranger one, than ever woman had before been ruled by.  She did not weep or moan, and only once kneeled down.  In her sweeping³ black robes she seemed more a majestic⁴ creature than she had ever been, and her beauty more that of a statue than of a mortal woman.  She sent away all other watchers, keeping only her sister with her, and Anne observed in her a strange protecting gentleness when she spoke⁵ of the dead man.

 

“I do not know whether dead men can feel and hear,” she said.  “Sometimes there has come into my mind—and made me shudder—the thought that, though they lie so still, mayhap they know what we do—and how they are spoken of as nothings whom live men and women but wait a moment to thrust away, that their own living may go on again in its accustomed way, or perchance more merrily.  If my lord knows aught, he will be grateful that I watch by him to-night in this solemn room.  He was ever grateful, and moved by any tenderness of mine.”

 

’Twas as she said, the room was solemn, and this almost to awfulness.  It was a huge cold chamber⁶ at best, and draped with black, and hung with hatchments; a silent gloom filled it which made it like a tomb.  Tall wax-candles burned in it dimly, but adding to its solemn shadows with their faint light; and in his rich coffin the dead man lay in his shroud⁷, his hands like

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