"Well," said she, "let that pass. Know that I have been sore affronted for want of my lines."
"Who hath dared affront thee?"
"No matter, those that will do it again if thou hast lost them, which the saints forbid."
"I lose them? nay, there they lie, close to thy hand."
"Where, where, oh where?"
Clement hung his head. "Look in the Vulgate. Heaven forgive me: I thought thou wert dead, and a saint in heaven."
She looked, and on the blank leaves of the poor soul's Vulgate she found her marriage lines.
"Thank God!" she cried, "thank God! Oh, bless thee, Gerard, bless thee! Why what is here, Gerard?"
On the other leaves were pinned every scrap of paper she had ever sent him, and their two names she had once written together in sport, and the lock of her hair she had given him, and half a silver coin she had broken with him, and a straw she had sucked her soup with the first day he ever saw her.
When Margaret saw these proofs of love and signs of a gentle heart bereaved, even her exultation at getting back her marriage lines was overpowered by gushing tenderness. She almost staggered, and her hand went to her bosom, and she leaned her brow against the stone cell and wept so silently that he did not see she was weeping; indeed she would not let him, for she felt that to befriend him now she must be the stronger; and emotion weakens.