“Lady Lettice, do pray you tell me,” panteth she, “if you have seen or heard aught of our Blanche?”
“Nay, Alice, in no wise,” saith Mother.
“Lack the day!” quoth she, “then our fears be true.”
“What fears, dear heart?” I think Father, and Mother, and Aunt Joyce, asked at her all together.
“I would as lief say nought, saving to my Lady, and Mistress Joyce,” she saith: so they bare her away, and what happed at that time I cannot say, saving that Father himself took Alice home, and did seem greatly concerned at her trouble. Well, this was scantly o’er ere a messenger come with a letter to Mother, whereon she had no sooner cast her eyes than she brake forth with a cry of pleasure. Then, Father desiring to know what it were, she told us all that certain right dear and old friends of hers, the which she had not seen of many years, were but now at the Salutation Inn at Ambleside, and would fain come on and tarry a season here if it should suit with Mother’s conveniency to have them.
“And right fain should I be,” saith she; and so said Father likewise.
Then Mother told us who were these her old friends: to wit, Sir Robert Stafford and his lady, which was of old time one Mistress Dulcibel Fenton, of far kin unto my Lady Norris, that was Mother’s mistress of old days at Minster Lovel: and moreover, one Mistress Martin, a widow that is sister unto Sir Robert, and was Mother’s fellow when she served my dear-worthy Lady of Surrey. So Father saith he would ride o’er himself to Ambleside, and give them better welcome than to send but a letter back: and Mother did desire her most loving commendations unto them all, and bade us all be hasteful and help to make ready the guest-chambers. So right busy were we all the morrow, and no time for no tales of no sort: but in the afternoon, when all was done, Aunt Joyce had us three up into her chamber, and bade us sit and listen.
“For it is a sorrowful story I have to tell,” saith she: and added, as though she spake to herself,—“ay, and it were best got o’er ere Dulcie cometh.”
So we sat all in the window-seat, Milly in the midst, and Aunt Joyce afore us in a great cushioned chair.
“When I was of your years, Milly,” saith she, “I dwelt—where I now do at Minster Lovel, with my father and my sister Anstace. Our mother was dead, and our baby brother Walter; and of us there had never been more. But we had two cousins—one Aubrey Louvaine, the son of our mother’s sister,—you wot who he is,” she saith, and smiled: “and the other, the son of our father’s sister dwelt at Oxford with his mother, a widow, and his name was—Leonard Norris.”