of &o$c f unonl)'g (Srabe. 93 



open, and passing on with a beating heart through a 

 long, winding, subterraneous passage, she emerged again 

 into the open air, and following on a little further, she 

 discovered a lodge, situated in the most retired part of 

 the forest. Beautiful trees grew round, with a spacious 

 garden, and a bower, in which a young lady was 

 seen busily engaged in embroidery. This isolated 

 fact records merely the circumstance which led to the 

 finding of Fair Rosamond by Queen Eleanor ; it speaks, 

 not of the bitter misery of the one, nor the distress 

 occasioned to the other, nor, most probably, the making 

 known by Rosamond, in the first moment of her dismay, 

 that she believed herself the wife of the man who had 

 entailed such wretchedness upon her. But whatever 

 might have passed at that interview, its result was, the 

 retiring of Fair Rosamond from her secret bower to the 

 nunnery of Godstow, where she passed twenty years of 

 her weary life, and died when she was forty years of 

 age, in " the high odour of sanctity." Her grave 

 remained unclosed, according to the fashion of the times, 

 but a sort of temporary covering, somewhat resembling 

 a tent, was raised immediately above it. The coffin and 

 the tent were both before the altar, and over them was 

 spread a pall of fair white silk, with tapers burning round, 

 and richly emblazoned banners waving over. Thus 

 lying in state, it awaited the erection of a costly monu- 

 ment, till St. Hugh commanded its expulsion. But the 

 nuns remembered their poor sister, whom they had laid 



