One at least of the ladies who had disturbed Elaine’s hilarity did not look a person of whom it was necessary to be afraid. She was a matronly woman of middle age, bearing the remains of extreme beauty. She had a good-natured expression, and she rather shrank back, as if she were there on sufferance only. But the other, who came forward into the room, was tall, spare, upright, and angular, with a face which struck Clarice as looking very like verjuice.
“Agatha!” called the latter, sharply; and, laying her hand, not gently, on Elaine’s shoulder, she gave her a shake which rapidly reduced her to gravity.
“Ye weary, wretched giglots, what do ye thus laughing and tittering, when I have distinctly forbidden the same?—Agatha!—Know ye not that all ye be miserable sinners, and this lower world a vale of tears?—Agatha!”
“Truly, Cousin Meg,” observed the other lady, now coming forward, “methinks you go far to make it such.”
“Agatha might have more sense,” returned her acetous companion. “I have bidden her forty times o’er to have these maids well ordered, and mine house as like to an holy convent as might be compassed; and here is she none knows whither—taking her pleasure, I reckon—and these caitiff hildings making the very walls for to ring with their wicked foolish laughter!—Agatha! bring me hither the rod. I will see if a good whipping bring not down your ill-beseen spirits, mistress!”
Elaine turned pale, and cast a beseeching glance at the pleasanter of the ladies.
“Nay, now, Cousin Meg,” interposed she, “I pray you, let not this my first visit to Oakham be linked with trouble to these young maids. I am well assured you know grey heads cannot be well set on green shoulders.”
“Lady, I am right unwilling to deny any bidding of yours. But I do desire of you to tell me if it be not enough to provoke a saint to swear?”
“What! to hear a young maid laugh, cousin? Nay, soothly, I would not think so.”
Mistress Underdone had entered the room, and, after dropping a courtesy to each of the ladies, stood waiting the pleasure of her mistress. Clarice was slowly coming to the conclusion, with dire dismay, that the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman before her was no other than the Lady Margaret of Cornwall, her lovely lady with the pathetic eyes.