While Jessie slept and she was not buried in the depths of a newspaper to kill time, she would be brooding over this subject: If Jessie Staples would only die!
One day, while in this morbid mood, her eyes fell upon a fatal paragraph that riveted her attention with breathless interest.
It spoke of the death of a once noted court beauty who had been in her time the toast of all Europe. Men had fought duels for her sake, and courtiers thought it a great honor to risk life and limb to do her bidding, being repaid by only a smile or one glance from her wine-dark eyes.
It happened that while riding about in her pony-cart she had, by chance, one day encountered a poor tradesman's son who had stopped by a brook at which her own horse was slaking his thirst, to give his steed a drink.
One glance at the fair, handsome Saxon face, and the girl who had laughed to scorn full many a lover, felt her heart going from her keeping to this bonny stranger.
Although he was poor—only a tradesman's son—and she had wealth untold, yet the beauty was not fair in his eyes.
He passed her by with only a gracious bow, as any courtier might, for he was in a hurry to reach the side of his beloved Gretchen. She was only a peasant maid, but in his eyes she was more beautiful than a queen.
He loved the pretty Gretchen with all his heart.
When my lady came to inquire about him, and learned he had a pretty little sweetheart, she grew very wroth, but she said never a word.
On that day she sent for Gretchen, and employed her as her maid. But from that hour there was a change in Gretchen's life.