“Oh, would I?” interpolated Diana.
“Why?” asked more than one voice.
“I am sure,” said Olympias, “I had ever so much rather be under the Lady Queen than our Lady.”
“Oh, that may be,” said Diana. “I was not looking at it in that light. There is some amusement in deceiving our Lady, and one doesn’t feel it wrong, because she is such a vixen; but there would be no fun in taking in the Queen, she’s too good.”
“I wonder what Father Bevis would say to that doctrine,” demurely remarked Elaine. “What it seems to mean is, that a lie is not such a bad thing if you tell it to a bad person as it would be if you told it to a good one. Now I doubt if Father Bevis would be quite of that opinion.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” was Diana’s reply.
“Well, but is it nonsense? Didst thou mean that?”
It was rather unusual for Elaine thus to satirise Diana, and looked as if the two had changed characters, especially when Diana walked away, muttering something which no one distinctly heard.
Elaine proved herself a tolerably true prophetess. Fête followed fête. Clarice found herself initiated into Court circles, and discovered that she was enjoying herself very much. But whether the attraction lay in the pageants, in the dancing, in her own bright array, or in the companionship, she did not pause to ask herself. Perhaps if she had paused, and made the inquiry, she might have discovered that life had changed to her since she came to Westminster. The things eternal, of which Heliet alone had spoken to her, had faded away into far distance; they had been left behind at Oakham. The things temporal were becoming everything.
In a stone balcony overhanging the Thames, at Whitehall, sat Earl Edmund of Cornwall, in a thoughtful attitude, resting his head upon his hand. He had been alone for half an hour, but now a tall man in a Dominican habit, who was not Father Bevis, came round the corner of the balcony, which ran all along that side of the house. He was the Prior or Rector of Ashridge, a collegiate community, founded by the Earl himself, of which we shall hear more anon.