“Thank the saints!” reached Clarice’s ears in a whisper from Olympias, and was deliberately echoed in the heart of the former.
“But that will never do for me!” exclaimed Ada. “I am sure I have no vocation. What am I to do?”
“The Lady proposes, in her goodness,” said the Countess’s mouthpiece, “to get thee an appointment in the household of one of the Ladies the King’s daughters.”
“Ha, jolife!” said Ada, and ceased her interjections.
“For you, Dames,” continued Felicia, turning to Clarice and Olympias, “she says that, being wedded, you are already provided for, and need no thought on her part.”
“Oh, then, I may go back to Oakham,” answered Olympias in a satisfied tone. “That is what I want.”
Clarice wondered sorrowfully what her lot would be—whether she might return to Oakham. She felt more at home there than anywhere else. The question was whether, Clarice being now at large, Vivian would continue in the Earl’s service; and even if he did, they might perhaps no longer live in the Castle. Clarice took this new trouble where she carried them all; but the Earl’s sorrow was more in her mind than her own. She was learning to cultivate:—
“A heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathise.”
She found that Vivian had already heard the news from Father Miles, and she timidly ventured to ask him what he intended to do.
After a few flights of rhetoric concerning the extreme folly of the Countess—to forsake an earldom for the cloister was a proceeding not in Vivian’s line at all—that gentleman condescended so far to answer his wife as to observe that he was not fool enough not to know when he was well off. Clarice thankfully conjectured that they would return to Oakham. She thought it better, however, to ask the question point blank; and she received a reply—of course accompanied by a snub.