Milly sobbed again, but methought something more softly.
“We were to have been wed o’ Sunday even,” saith she, “by a Popish priest, right as good as in church,—and then to have come home and won Father and Mother to forgive us and bless us. Then all had been smooth and sweet, and we should have lived happy ever after.”
Oh, but what pitifulness was there in Aunt Joyce’s smile!
“Should you?” saith she, in a tone which seemed to me like the biggest nay ever printed in a book. “Poor innocent child! A Popish priest cannot lawfully wed any, and evening is out of the canonical hours. Wist thou not that such marriage should ne’er have held good in law?”
“It might have been good in God’s sight, trow,” saith she, something perversely.
“Nay!” saith Aunt Joyce. “When men go to, of set purpose, to break the laws of their country,—without it be in obedience to His plain command,—I see not how the Lord shall hold them guiltless. So he promised to bring thee home to ask pardon, did he? Poor, trusting, deluded child! Thou shouldst never have come home, Milly—unless it had been a year or twain hence, a forlorn, heart-broken, wretched thing. Well, we could have forgiven thee and comforted thee then—as we will now.”
I am right weary a-writing, and will stay mine hand till I set down Aunt’s story to-morrow.
Selwick Hall, December ye second.
I marvel when I can make an end of writing, or when matters shall have done happening. For early this morrow, ere breakfast were well over, come a quick rap of the door, which Caitlin opened, and in come Alice Lewthwaite. Not a bit like herself looked she, with a scarf but just cast o’er her head, and all out of breath, as though she had come forth all suddenly, and had run fast and far. We had made most of us an end of eating, but were yet sat at the table.
“Alice, dear heart, what aileth thee?” saith Mother, and rose up.