“May, was it? Oh, I know! It was the eve of Saint Helen’s Day. Well, things went on right enough, till my Lord of Canterbury took it into his head that my Lord and father had no business to detain Tunbridge Castle,—it all began with that. It was about July, I think.”
“I thought Tunbridge Castle belonged to my Lord of Gloucester. What had either to do with it?”
“O Aunt Marjory! Have you forgotten that my young Lord of Gloucester is in ward to my Lord and father? The Lord King gave him first to my Lord the Bishop of Winchester, when his father died; and then, about a year after, he took him away from the Bishop, and gave him to my fair father. Don’t you remember him?—such a pretty boy! I think you knew all about it at the time.”
“Very likely I did, Magot. One forgets things, sometimes.”
And Margaret, looking up into the fair face, saw, and did not understand, the hidden pain behind the smile.
“So my Lord of Canterbury complained of my fair father to the Lord King. (I wonder he could not attend to his own business.) But the Lord King said that as my Lord of Gloucester held in chief of the Crown, all vacant trusts were his, to give as it pleased him. And then—Aunt Marjory, do you like priests?”
“Magot, what a question!”
“But do you?”
“All priests are not alike, my dear child. They are like other people—some good, and some bad.”
“But surely all priests ought to be good.”