“Dieu La Voulu.”
“Over himself and his own heart’s complaining
Victorious still.”
The bells were pealing merrily for the marriage of Clare Avery—I beg her pardon—of Clare Tremayne; and the wedding party were seated at breakfast in the great hall at Enville Court.
“The bridesmaids be well-looking,” said Lady Enville, behind her fan, to Sir Piers Feversham, who was her next neighbour,—for Sir Piers and Lucrece had come to the wedding—“and I do hear Mistress Penelope Travis—she of them that is nearest—is like to be the next bride of our vicinage.”
“Say you so?” responded Sir Piers. “I do desire all happiness be with her. But there is one of yonder maids for whom in very deed I feel compassion, and it is Mistress Lysken Barnevelt. Her May is well-nigh over, and no bells be ringing for her. Poor maiden!”
“Go to, now, what dolts be men!” quoth Mistress Rachel Enville, addressing herself, to all appearance, to the dish of flummery which stood before her. “They think, poor misconceiving companions! that we be all a-dying for them. That’s a man’s notion. Moreover, they take it that ’tis the one end and aim of every woman in the world to be wed. That’s a man’s notion, again. And belike they fancy, poor patches! that when she striketh thirty years on the bell, any woman will wed any man that will but take compassion to ask her. That caps all their notions. (Thou shalt right seldom hear a woman to make no such a blunder. They know better.) Poor blockheads!—as if we could not be useful nor happy without them! Lysken Barnevelt and Rachel Enville, at the least, be not fools enough to think it.”
“Neither is the Queen’s Majesty, my mistress,” observed Sir Piers, greatly amused.
“Who e’er said the Queen’s Majesty were a fool?” demanded Rachel bluntly. “She is a woman, and no man—Heaven be praised for all His mercies!”
“Yet if no man were,” pursued Sir Piers, “methinks you gentlewomen should be but ill bestead.”
“Oh, should we so?” retorted Rachel. “Look you, women make no wars, nor serve therein: nor women be no lawyers, to set folk by the ears: nor women write not great tomes of controversy, wherein they curse the one the other because Nell loveth a white gown, and Bess would have a black. Is the Devil a woman? Answer me that, I pray you.”