“Marry, then but few shall win there.”
“So do I fear,” saith my Lady.
“Dame, under your good pleasure,” saith Dame Hilda, looking her earnestly in the face, “where gat you such notions? They be something new. At the least, never heard I your Ladyship so to speak aforetime.”
My Lady’s cheek faintly flushed.
“May God forgive me,” saith she, “all these years to have locked up his Word, which was burning in mine own heart! Yet in good sooth, Dame, you are partly right. Ere I went to Skipton, I was like one that seeth a veiled face, or that gazeth through smoked glass. But now mine eyes have beheld the face of Him that was veiled, and I have spoken with Him, as man speaketh with his friend. And if you would know who helped me thereto, it was an holy hermit, by name Richard Rolle, that did divers times visit me in my prison at Skipton. And he knows Him full well.”
“Dame!” saith Dame Hilda, looking somewhat anxiously on my mother, “I do trust you go not about to die, nor to hie in cloister and leave all these poor babes! Do bethink you, I pray, ere you do either.”
My Lady smiled. “Nay, good my Dame!” saith she. “How can I go in cloister, that am wedded wife?”
“Eh, but you might get your lord’s consent thereto—some wedded women doth.”
I was looking on my Lady, and I saw a terrible change in her face when Dame Hilda spoke those words. I felt, too, Isabel’s sudden nervous shiver. And I guessed what they both thought—that assent would be easy enough to win. For in all those months since Queen Isabel came over, he had never come near us. He was ever at the Court, waiting upon her. And though his duties—if he had them, but what they were we knew not—might keep him at the Court in general, yet surely, had he been very desirous to see us, he might have won leave to run over when the Queen was at Hereford, were it only for an hour or twain.
Our mother did not answer for a moment. When she did, it was to say—“Nay, vows may not be thus lightly done away. ‘Till death’ scarce means, till one have opportunity to undo.”