“Ay, dear heart, I know. Nay, fear not. I’ll not take the last bud off the old tree. But, thyself saved, Lettice, there is none left in all the world that I love as I love her. Perchance she will find it out one day.”
“Joyce, my dear sister—”
“Hold thy peace, Lettice. I’ll not have her, save now and again on a visit. And not that now. Thou shouldst miss her sorely, in settling down in thy new home. Where shall it be?”
“In the King’s Street of Westminster. My good Lord Oxford hath made earnest with a gentleman, a friend of his, that hath there an estate, to let us on long lease an house and garden he hath, that now be standing empty.”
“Ay, that is a pleasant, airy place, nigh the fields. At what rent?”
“Twenty-four shillings the quarter. Houses be dearer there than up in Holborn, yet not so costly as in the City; and it shall not be far for Aubrey, being during the day in the Court with his Lord.”
“Lettice, you shall need to pray for that boy.”
“What shall I ask for him, Joyce?”
“‘That he may both perceive and know what things he ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.’ Don’t let him rule you. He is very like to try it, the only man in a family of women—for he shall make little account of Hans Moriszoon, though there is more sense in Hans’s little finger than in all Aubrey’s brains. If I can see into the future, Aubrey is not unlike to push you o’er, and Hans to pick you up again. Have a care, Lettice. You remember when Walter was in Court, with my Lord Oxford?”
“O Joyce!”