"
Maude departed with the same supercilious deportment. The bell was
immediately heard, and the stranger, making the best of his way into the
hall, found the doors wide open, and an indiscriminate assemblage of
supplicants, displaying to the best advantage a variety of modes and
manifestations of distress, unhappily not confined to those unhallowed
days of wretchedness and misrule. Their chief attention seemed to be
directed towards a side wicket, in the upper part of which was a slide
for the more convenient distribution of the accustomed largess, when the
Lady Mabel did not superintend the apportioning of her beneficence.
It was soon whispered amongst the crowd that she, who had for a
considerable time kept aloof from all intercourse, would that day
distribute her own bounty.
The tinkling of the bell ceased, and suddenly the door flew open. Lady
Mabel and her maidens entered. The crowd fell back as she approached. Of
a commanding form and deportment, she seemed a being of some superior
creation; whilst, with slow and majestic steps, she passed on to the
upper division of the hall, where the dais raised her slightly above the
multitude.
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