"Oh, it is all so dark!" she sobbed. "If we might have gone to Heaven together, and have had each other there! Why are we kept parted? Agnes, I hate these signs of mine high estate, which seem as if they came betwixt me and him—betwixt me and peace. If I had not been King Edward's niece—Oh, if this awful war had never begun!"
Agnes had dropped her work, and sat looking out of the window. She did not know what to say. Well enough she knew that religious platitudes would do no good here. The Lady Anne was nearer God than she was, but just now she was in the dark. She had dropped the conscious holding of the Father's hand, and she felt like a lost child left out in the cold. Agnes did not realise that much of her depression was physical; but she did feel the necessity for offering some cheerful diversion to her thoughts.
"Dear my Lady, pray you, think on pleasanter gear."
"Wilt find it for me, Agnes?"
That was not an easy task. Agnes hesitated. But in a few moments more the sorrowing girl had found it for herself.
"I suppose," she said more quietly, "I must lift up mine eyes unto the hills, above all the turns in the long road. We shall be together one day, and with God. I shall not be long first. And set down at Christ's feet in the light of the Golden City, I count it shall not seem long to wait for him."
The child was coming back into the light. Physically, the burst of tears had relieved her.
"And yet, after all," she said, "I shall miss him, till he comes. One cannot love one instead of another, even if God be that One. And to love once is to love for ever."
"You can tell the Lord so, dear my Lady."
Lady Anne looked up with an expression of child-like trust and simplicity in her eyes.