“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.
“Gerard,” said she, “I know you are wise and good. You must have a reason for what you are doing, let it seem ever so unreasonable. Talk we like old friends. Why are you buried alive?”
“Margaret, to escape temptation. My impious ire against those two had its root in the heart; that heart then I must deaden, and, Dei gratia, I shall. Shall I, a servant of Christ and of the Church, court temptation? Shall I pray daily to be led out on't, and walk into it with open eyes?”
“That is good sense anyway,” said Margaret, with a consummate affectation of candour.