“I chose you before all others,” he went on, “because you are beautiful and good. And I wanted to win your love apart from my rank and fortune.”
Until then he had always said “thou” to her, as the country people did, but now he was saying “you.”
“Why did he so suddenly stop saying ‘thou,’” she whispered to herself. But not wishing to disappoint him, she smiled upon him sweetly, though with sadness.
She soon became mistress of herself, and acted as I was fitting in her new estate. But every evening when she was alone, she would stand weeping, at the window from which she could see the little white cottage among the trees.
“Ah,” she would think, “if only he were still the poor, proud artist who could put all the country-side upon a square of canvas, and bounded our horizon with his love of me!”
Soon she began to pine away. Not doctors, nor journeys to new places, nor amusements, nor all the attention and comforts that money could buy were to make her strong again. One summer evening, like that on which she had first come to the castle, she leaned her head against the window casing and closed her lovely eyes for ever.
“We cannot tell of what disease she died,” said the doctors.
“But I know,” said the Lord of Burleigh, bowed down with grief.
Then he called to her attendants: “Put her in her wedding gown. The simple woollen dress which she wore when she came Here, that she may rest in peace.”
* * *