"Only 'let her that thinketh she standeth, take heed lest she fall,'" said Lady Judith, with a quiet smile.
"I?" said Lady Isabel, with a world of meaning in her tone.
"My child," was the reply, "they that undertake to censure the cleanness of their neighbours' robes, should be very careful to avoid any spot on the purity of their own. Dost thou not remember our Lord's saying about the mote and the beam?"
"Well," said Lady Isabel, bringing her scissors together with a good deal of snap, "I think that those who associate with such people as the Princess Constantia bring a reflection on their own characters. Snow and soot do not go well together."
"The soot defiles the snow," responded Lady Judith. "But it does not affect the sunbeam."
"I do not understand you," said Lady Isabel bluntly.
"Those who confide in their own strength and goodness, Isabel, are like the snow,—very fair, until sullied; but liable to be sullied by the least speck. But those who take hold of God's strength, which is Christ our Lord, are the sunbeam, a heavenly emanation which cannot be sullied. Art thou the snow, or the sunbeam, my child?"
"Oh dear! I cannot deal with tropes and figures, in that style," answered she, rising. "And my work is finished; I am going now."
I fancied she did not look very sorry for it.
Great events are happening. The Lord King, finding his malady grows rather worse than better, has resolved to abdicate, in favour of his nephew, Lady Sybil's baby son. So to-morrow Beaudouin V. is to be proclaimed throughout the Holy City, and on the Day of Saint Edmund the King,[#] he will be crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They say the Lord King was a very wise man before he became a mesel; and he will still give counsel when needed, the young King being but three years old.