‘I’ll tell your Royal Highness why,’ replied Luke, who gained courage as he was put upon the defensive. ‘She that ‘s gone—the Heavens be her bed!—made her sister promise, in her last hour, never to ask nor look for favour or benefit from your Royal Highness.’
‘I will not believe this,’ broke in Charles indignantly; ‘you are more than bold, sir, to dare to tell me so.’
‘’Tis true as Gospel,’ replied the friar. ‘Her words were: “Let there be one that went down to the grave with the thought that loving him was its best reward! and leave me to think that I live in his memory as I used in his heart.”’
The Prince turned away, and drew his hand across his eyes.
‘How came she here—since when?’ asked he suddenly.
‘Four years back; we came together. I bore her company all the way from Ireland, and on foot too, just to put the child into the college here.’
‘And she has been in poverty all this while?’
‘Poverty! faith, you might call it distress!—keeping a little trattoria in the Viccolo d’Orso, taking sewing, washing—whatever she could; slaving and starving, just to get shoes and the like for the boy.’
‘How comes it, then, that she has yielded at last to write me this?’ said Charles, who, in proportion as his self-accusings grew more poignant, sought to turn reproach on any other quarter.
‘She didn’t, nor wouldn’t,’ said the Fra; ‘’twas I did it myself. I told her that she might ease her conscience, by never accepting anything; that I’d write the petition and go up with it, and that all I ‘d ask was a trifle for the child.’