“Truly, no.”
“Then let a brother tell thee who has had it set to him. It is a hard lesson, Clarice, and one that an inattentive scholar can make yet harder if he will. It is, ‘Not my will, but Thine, be done.’”
“I cannot! I cannot!” cried Clarice passionately.
“Some scholars say that,” replied the Earl gently, “until the evening shadows grow very long. They are the weariest of all when they reach home.”
“My Lord, pardon me, but you cannot understand it!” Clarice stood up. “I am young, and you—”
“I am over forty years,” replied the Earl. “Ah, child, dost thou make that blunder?—dost thou think the child’s sorrows worse than the man’s? I have known both, and I tell thee the one is not to be compared to the other. Young hearts are apt to think it, for grief is a thing new and strange to them. But if ever it become to thee as thy daily bread, thou wilt understand it better. It has been mine, Clarice, for eighteen years.”
That was a year more than Clarice had been in the world. She looked up wonderingly into the saddened, dove-like Plantagenet eyes—those eyes characteristic of the House—so sweet in repose, so fiery in anger. Clarice had but a dim idea what his sorrow was.
“My Lord,” she said, half inquiringly, “methinks you never knew such a grief as mine?”
The smile which parted the Earl’s lips was full of pity.
“Say rather, maiden, that thou never knewest one like mine. But God knows both, Clarice, and He pities both, and when His time comes He will comfort both. At the best time, child! Only let us acquaint ourselves with Him, for so only can we be at peace. And now, farewell. I had better go in and preach my sermon to myself.”