“She is no match for Lucrece,” observed Mrs Rose.
“Truth: but I am in no wise assured Don Juan is not,” answered Mr Tremayne with a slightly amused look. “As for Blanche, she is like to suffer; and I had well-nigh added, she demeriteth the same: but it will do her good, Thekla. At the least, if the Lord bless it unto her—be assured I meant not to leave out that.”
“The furnace purifieth the gold,” said Mrs Tremayne sadly: “yet the heat is none the less fierce for that, Robin.”
“Dear heart, whether wouldst thou miss the suffering rather, and the purifying, or take both together?”
“It is soon over, Thekla,” said her mother, quietly.
During the fierce heat of the Marian persecution, those words had once been said to Marguerite Rose. She had failed to realise them then. The lesson was learned now—thirty-five years later.
“Soon over, to look back, dear Mother,” replied Mrs Tremayne. “Yet it never seems short to them that be in the furnace.”
Mrs Rose turned rather suddenly to her son-in-law.
“Robin, tell me, if thou couldst have seen thy life laid out before thee on a map, and it had been put to thy choice to bear the Little Ease, or to leave go,—tell me what thou hadst chosen?”
For Mr Tremayne had spent several months in that horrible funnel-shaped prison, aptly termed Little Ease, and had but just escaped from it with life. He paused a moment, and his face grew very thoughtful.