"Aye so, my Lady."
"Then thou wilt be a comfort to me—in what is coming. It will not be long, Frideswide. Dost thou know that?"
Frideswide's voice was very low and tender as she said, "Ay, my Lady. I think it will not be long." She had more hardihood than Agnes, and spoke out her thoughts instead of feeling them in silence.
"And I shall be glad," said Lady Anne gently. "Only I hope my father may not be long after me. Though we have met of late but so seldom, yet I know the world will seem darker and colder to him when I am gone out of it. I am all he has save God; and he is all that I have."
Frideswide's eyes were wet; but she made no reply.
"I used to have a fair dream once—too fair to be true. I reckoned that we might have dwelt together, he and I, in some quiet cot in a green glade, where no strangers should come near us, and none seek to take us from each other. But—it was not to be."
"Not here, Madam. Yet will it not be—hereafter?"
"I feel as though I knew little of what will be hereafter. It will be as God wills; and His will is good. I lack rest sorely—so does my father: and we miss each other very, very much. I suppose our Lord can give us what we need; and as to how, and when, and where—He will know. We have only to wait. Only—I am so weary!"
And she turned on her pillow with a heavy sigh. Weary of life and all that was in it—and she only just eighteen! Frideswide would have given much to comfort her: but she did not know what to say.
"Our Lord was weary Himself," she said at last.