“Ay,” replied Lady Whitburn, “she must up—don her clothes, and away with me.”
“Hush, I pray you, madam. How, how, Grisell, my poor child. Call Master Miles, Maudlin! Give me that water.” The Countess was raising the poor child in her arms, and against her bosom, for the shock of that glance in the mirror, followed by the maid’s harsh reproaches, and fright at the arrival of the two ladies, had brought on a choking, hysterical sort of convulsive fit, and the poor girl writhed and gasped on Lady Salisbury’s breast, while her mother exclaimed, “Heed her not, Lady; it is all put on to hinder me from taking her home. If she could go stealing to your room—”
“No, no,” broke out a weeping, frightened voice. “It was I, Lady Aunt. You bade me never tell her how her poor face looked, and when she begged and prayed me, I did not say, but I fetched the mirror. Oh! oh! It has not been the death of her.”
“Nay, nay, by God’s blessing! Take away the glass, Margaret. Go and tell thy beads, child; thou hast done much scathe unwittingly! Ah, Master Miles, come to the poor maid’s aid. Canst do aught for her?”
“These humours must be drawn off, my lady,” said the barber-surgeon, who advanced to the bed, and felt the pulse of the poor little patient. “I must let her blood.”
Maudlin, whose charge she was, came to his help, and Countess Alice still held her up, while, after the practice of those days, he bled the already almost unconscious child, till she fainted and was laid down again on her pillows, under the keeping of Maudlin, while the clanging of the great bell called the family down to the meal which broke fast, whether to be called breakfast or dinner.
It was plain that Grisell was in no state to be taken on a journey, and her mother went grumbling down the stair at the unchancy bairn always doing scathe.
Lord Salisbury, beside whom she sat, courteously, though perhaps hardly willingly, invited her to remain till her daughter was ready to move.
“Nay, my Lord, I am beholden to you, but I may scarce do that. I be sorely needed at Whitburn Tower. The knaves go all agee when both my lord and myself have our backs turned, and my lad bairns—worth a dozen of yon whining maid—should no longer be left to old Cuthbert Ridley and Nurse. Now the Queen and Somerset have their way ’tis all misrule, and who knows what the Scots may do?”
“There are Nevils and Dacres enough between Whitburn and the Border,” observed the Earl gravely. However, the visitor was not such an agreeable one as to make him anxious to press her stay beyond what hospitality demanded, and his wife could not bear to think of giving over her poor little patient to such usage as she would have met with on the journey.