‘To the other gate,’ said the portress hastily. Margaret’s face twinkled with fun. ‘I wad fain take a turn with the beggar crew,’ she said to her sisters in Scotch; ‘but it might cause too great an outcry if I were kenned. Commend me to the Mere St. Antoine,’ she added in French, ‘and tell her that the Dauphiness would fain hear mass with her.’
The portress cast an anxious doubtful glance, but being apparently convinced, cried out for pardon, while hastily unlocking her door, and sending a message to the Abbess.
As they entered the cloistered quadrangle the nuns in black procession were on their way to mass, but turned aside to receive their visitors. Margaret knelt for a moment for the blessing and kiss of the Abbess, then greeted the nun whom she had mentioned, but begged for no further ceremony, and then was led into church.
It was a brief festival mass, and was not really over before she, with a restlessness of which her sisters began to be conscious, began to rise and make her way out. A nun followed and entreated her to stay and break her fast, but she would accept nothing save a draught of milk, swallowed hastily, and with signs of impatience as her sisters took their turn.
She walked quickly, rather as one guilty of an escapade, again surprising her sisters, who fancied the liberty of a married princess illimitable.
Jean even ventured to ask her why she went so fast, ‘Would the King of France be displeased?’
‘He! Poor gude sire Charles! He heeds not what one does, good or bad; no, not the murdering of his minion before his eyes,’ said Margaret, half laughing.
‘Thy husband, would he be angered?’ pressed on Jean.
‘My husband? Oh no, it is not in the depth and greatness of is thoughts to find fault with his poor worm,’ said Margaret, a strange look, half of exultation, half of pain, on her face. ‘Ah! Jeanie, woman, none kens in sooth how great and wise my Dauphin is, nor how far he sees beyond all around him, so that he cannot choose but scorn them and make them his tools. When he has the power, he will do more for this poor realm of France than any king before him.’
‘As our father would have done for Scotland,’ said Eleanor.