Indeed, neither her smile nor she seemed at that moment to be things of earth.

She held out her fair, noble arms, and he sprang to her, and so they stood, side beating against side.
"Yes, love," she said--"yes, love--and I have prayed, my Gerald, that I may give you sons who shall be men like you.

But when I give you women children, I shall pray with all my soul for them--that they may be just and strong and noble, and life begin for them as it began not for me." * * * * * In the morning of a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower.

Children stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn; good gossips ran out of their cottage door, wiping their arms dry, from their tubs and scrubbing-buckets, their honest red faces broadening into maternal grins.
"Ay, 'tis well over, that means surely," one said to the other; "and a happy day has begun for the poor lady--though God knows she bore herself queenly to the very last, as if she could have carried her burden for another year, and blenched not a bit as other women do.

Bless mother and child, say I." "And 'tis an heir," said another.