“I thank thee, Avena,” said the Countess, with her curt laugh. “Sooth to say, I wist not my soul was of such worth in thine eyes, and still less in thine husband’s. I would my body weighed a little more with the pair of you. So I am to confess my sins, forsooth? That shall be a light matter, methinks; I have but little chance to sin, shut up in this cage. Truly, I should find myself hard put to it to do damage to any of the Ten Commandments, hereaway. A dungeon’s all out praisable for keeping folks good—nigh as well as a sick bed. And when man has both together, he should be marvellous innocent. There, go thy ways; I’ll send for thee when I lack thee.”
Lady Foljambe almost slammed the door behind her, and, locking it, charged Amphillis to listen carefully for the Archbishop’s knock, and to unlock the door the moment she should hear it.
The Archbishop, meanwhile, had seated himself in the only chair in the room corresponding to that of the Countess. A chair was an object of consequence in the eyes of a mediaeval gentleman, for none but persons of high rank might sit on a chair; all others were relegated to a form, styled a bench when it had a back to it. Stools, however, were allowed to all. That certain formalities or styles of magnificence should have been restricted to persons of rank may be reasonable; but it does seem absurd that no others should have been allowed to be comfortable. “The good old times” were decidedly inconvenient for such as had no handles to their names.
“I speak, as I have been told, to the Lady Marguerite, Duchess of Brittany, and mother to my Lord Duke?” inquired the Archbishop.
“And Countess of Montfort,” was the answer. “Pray your Grace, give me all my names, for nought else is left me to pleasure me withal—saving a two-three ounces of slea-silk and an ell of gold fringe.”
“And what else would you?”
“What else?” The question was asked in passionate tones, and the dark flashing eyes went longingly across the valley to the Alport heights. “I would have my life back again,” she said. “I have not had a fair chance. I have done with my life not that I willed, but only that which others gave leave for me to do. Six and twenty years have I been tethered, and fretted, and limited, granted only the semblance of power, the picture of life, and thrust and pulled back whensoever I strained in the least at the leash wherein I was held. No dog has been more penned up and chained than I! And now, for eight years have I been cabined in one chamber, shut up from the very air of heaven whereunto God made all men free—shut up from every face that I knew and loved, saving one of mine ancient waiting-maids—verily, if they would use me worser than so, they shall be hard put to it, save to thrust me into my coffin and fasten down the lid on me. I want my life back again! I want the bright harvest of my youth, which these slugs and maggots have devoured, which I never had. I want the bloom of my dead happiness which men tare away from me. I want my dead lord, and mine estranged children, and my lost life! Tell me, has God no treasury whence He pays compensation for such wrongs as mine? Must I never see my little child again, the baby lad that clung to me and would not see me weep? My pillow is wet now, and no man careth for it—nay, nor God Himself. I was alway true woman; I never wronged human soul, that I know. I paid my dues, and shrived me clean, and lived honestly. Wherefore is all this come upon me?”
“Lady Marguerite, if you lost a penny and gained a gold noble, would you think you were repaid the loss or no?”
“In very deed I should,” the sick woman replied, languidly; the fire had spent itself in that outburst, and the embers had little warmth left in them.
“Yet,” said the Archbishop, significantly, “you would not have won the lost thing back.”