"What with her Grace, and what with Tamzine, it is not a dog's life we lead!" continued Marion. "If the thing lay in mine hands, you should see, but I would wed the first man that asked me, just to be out of it."
"So might you be worser off than now," suggested Jane.
"Could not!" said Marion expressively.
Jane shook her head as if she thought that very questionable.
"Men be queer matter," said she. "Now you can make out a woman."
"Good lack! think you making out is all?" replied Marion. "She is easy enough to make out, is Her Grace. So is Tamzine. But I love their company never a whit the more for that. Gramercy, there goeth my Lady's handbell! I must away."
In an upper room in the same house two other girls were sitting. One, who sat at work in the window-seat, was so like Frideswide that we can easily guess her to be Agnes Marston. She was a little quieter than her sister in manner, and a shade less good-looking.
The other girl sat in a large, handsome, curule chair, with an illuminated manuscript open on the table before her. Her face was a remarkable one. Her figure was extremely slender, thin almost to emaciation: but more striking than this was the wan white face, where two hectic spots burned in the hollow cheeks, and the large dark blue eyes seemed of unnatural size and brilliance. A long-drawn sigh made Agnes look up.
"Your Ladyship is weary, methinks," she said.
"I may well be thus," was the answer, as the head was leaned on the thin hand. "I was doing that which would weary an angel, for I was trying to understand God."