When Belasez had been about a week at the Castle, one afternoon she and Doucebelle were working alone in the wardrobe. The Countess and Margaret were away for the day, on a visit to the Abbess of Thetford; Eva and Marie were out on the leads; Hawise was busy in her own apartments. Belasez had been unusually silent that morning. She worked on in a hurried, nervous way, never speaking nor looking up, and a lovely arabesque pattern grew into beauty under her deft fingers. Suddenly Doucebelle said—
“Belasez, does life never puzzle thee?”
Belasez looked up, with almost a frightened expression in her eyes.
“Can anything puzzle one more?” she said: “unless it were the perplexity which is hovering over my soul.”
“Is that anything in which I could help thee?”
“It is something in which no human being could help me—only He before whom the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers.”
There was silence for a moment. Then, in a low, hushed tone, Belasez said—
“Doucebelle, didst thou ever do a thing which must be either very right, or very wrong, and thou hadst no means whereby to know which it was?”
“No,” answered Doucebelle slowly. “I can scarcely imagine such a thing.”
“Scarcely imagine the thing, or the uncertainty?”