CHAPTER VI.
While Harold mused over his father’s words, Edith, seated on a low stool beside the Lady of England, listened with earnest but mournful reverence to her royal namesake.
The Queen’s [113] closet opened like the King’s on one hand to an oratory, on the other to a spacious ante-room; the lower part of the walls was covered with arras, leaving space for a niche that contained an image of the Virgin. Near the doorway to the oratory, was the stoupe or aspersorium for holy-water; and in various cysts and crypts, in either room, were caskets containing the relics of saints. The purple light from the stained glass of a high narrow window, shaped in the Saxon arch, streamed rich and full over the Queen’s bended head like a glory, and tinged her pale cheek, as with a maiden blush; and she might have furnished a sweet model for early artist, in his dreams of St. Mary the Mother, not when, young and blest, she held the divine infant in her arms, but when sorrow had reached even the immaculate bosom, and the stone had been rolled over the Holy Sepulchre. For beautiful the face still was, and mild beyond all words; but, beyond all words also, sad in its tender resignation.
And thus said the Queen to her godchild:
“Why dost thou hesitate and turn away? Thinkest thou, poor child, in thine ignorance of life, that the world ever can give thee a bliss greater than the calm of the cloister? Pause, and ask thyself, young as thou art, if all the true happiness thou hast known, is not bounded to hope. As long as thou hopest, thou art happy.”
Edith sighed deeply, and moved her young head in involuntary acquiescence.
“And what is life to the nun, but hope. In that hope, she knows not the present, she lives in the future; she hears ever singing the chorus of the angels, as St. Dunstan heard them sing at the birth of Edgar [114]. That hope unfolds to her the heiligthum of the future. On earth her body, in heaven her soul!”
“And her heart, O Lady of England?” cried Edith, with a sharp pang.
The Queen paused a moment, and laid her pale hand kindly on Edith’s bosom.