“She has been asking questions of Genta. But she has got hold of the wrong pattern—she fancies Anegay was her sister.”
“Does she?” replied Abraham, in a tone of sorrowful tenderness.
“There’s less harm in her thinking that, than if she knew the truth. Genta showed great good sense: she professed to know nothing at all about it.”
“Dissimulation again, Licorice!” came, with a heavy sigh, from Abraham.
“Hold thy tongue! Where should we be without it?”
Abraham made no answer. But early on the following morning he summoned Belasez to the little porch-chamber, and she went with her heart beating.
As she suspected, the catechism was now to be gone through. But poor Abraham was the more timid of the two. He was so evidently unwilling to speak, and so regretfully tender, that Belasez’s heart warmed, and she lost all her shyness. Of course, she told him more than she otherwise would have done.
Belasez denied the existence of any Christian lover, or indeed of any lover at all, with such clear, honest eyes, that Abraham could not but believe her. But, he urged, had she ever seen any man in the Castle, to speak to him?
“Yes,” said Belasez frankly. “Not while the Lady was there. But during her absence, Sir Richard de Clare had been three times in the bower, and the priests had given lessons to the damsels in the ante-chamber.”
“Did any of these ever speak to thee?”