"You would speak with Agnes Marston, my master?" said a gentle voice close to him. "I am she."
The Duke turned quickly. He wore a long cloak, and a hat which could be pulled down so as to hide his face. For any eyes to recognise him would probably be fatal to his errand. Yet the sensation of utter isolation was oppressive, notwithstanding that.
"Gentle Mistress," said he, in a tone and manner which instantly revealed to Agnes that her visitor was of her own rank or above it, "I bring you a letter from Mistress Frideswide Marston, in France, and I pray you of your courtesy to give heed to that which is writ on the outside thereof."
Agnes held the letter up to the lamp, and read—
"Good Sister, I do beseech you to do that which this bearer shall request of you; and herein fail you not, for the love of me."
"My sister desires me that I will do what you shall ask," she said. "What ask you?"
"May I ask it with fewer ears by?" returned the Duke in a low tone.
Agnes nodded. That was a request only too intelligible in the fifteenth century. She took him aside to a small chamber where no other person was at that moment.
"Now, Master, your will with me?"
"I am the Duke of Exeter," he said simply. "And I pray you, Mistress Agnes, as you ever loved any human soul, that you will win for me privy speech of the only one that loveth me—the Lady Anne, my daughter."