[#] Gifts.
Thus invited, Frideswide picked out a plain silver ring, set with the badge of the fiery cresset in minute rubies. "This, methinks, should like her, if your Lordship set no store thereby."
"Certes, none at all: yet this is poor matter."
"It is enough, my gracious Lord, and I thank you right heartily for my sister."
"Tell her, I pray you, Mistress Frideswide, that the last words we spake each to other be the parting message of love[#] that I shall send her,—and may God give me to find it true for myself, as I pray she may for her."
[#] Then a word used generally in the sense of friendship or kindliness.
"What were they, an' it like your Lordship?"
"They were the words I told Jack Goose to give you as token of his trustworthiness, the which I thought should bring quickly one of our doctrine. 'Alle thingis, and in all thingis, Crist.'"
"May you so find it, my gracious Lord!"
The Duke gave her his hand at parting—an unusual condescension from his position to hers. Frideswide bent low, and kissed the hand of him whom she was no longer to call master, and whose face she would never see any more.