“Your pardon, Mistress Perrote; I was thinking of you.”
“Not hard to guess, when I saw thine eyes look divers times my ways. What anentis me, my maid?”
“I cry you mercy, Mistress Perrote; for you should very like say that whereon I thought was none of my business. Yet man’s thoughts will not alway be ruled. I did somewhat marvel, under your pleasure, at your answer to yon pedlar that asked how you came to be hither.”
“Wherefore? that I told him no more?”
“Ay; and likewise—”
“Make an end, my maid.”
“Mistress, again I cry you mercy; but it seemed me as though, while you sore pitied our Lady, you had no list to help her forth of her trouble, an’ it might be compassed. And I conceived (Note 1) it not.”
“It could not be compassed, Phyllis; and granting it so should, to what good purpose? Set in case that she came forth this morrow, a free woman—whither is she to wend, and what to do? To her son? He will have none of her. To her daughter? Man saith she hath scantly more freedom than her mother in truth, being ruled of an ill husband that giveth her no leave to work. To King Edward? It should but set him in the briars with divers other princes, the King of France and the Duke of Bretagne more in especial. To my Lady Princess? Verily, she is good woman, yet is she mother of my Lady Duchess; and though I cast no doubt she should essay to judge the matter righteously, yet ’tis but like that she should lean to her own child, which doubtless seeth through her lord’s eyes; and it should set her in the briars no less than King Edward. Whither, then, is she to go for whom there is no room on middle earth (Note 2), and whose company all men avoid? Nay, my maid, for the Lady Marguerite there is no home save Heaven; and there is none to be glad of her company save Him that was yet more lonely than she, and whose foes, like hers, were they of His own house.”
“’Tis sore pitiful!” said Amphillis, looking up with the tears in her eyes.
“‘Pitiful’! ay, never was sadder case sithence that saddest of all in the Garden of Gethsemane. Would God she would seek Him, and accept of His pity!”