“Please it the Lady,—the Lord!”
Constance rose quickly, with a more decided welcome than she usually vouchsafed to her husband.
“Why, my Lord! I thought you were in London.”
“What ill hath happed, son?” was the more penetrating remark of the Dowager.
“Well nigh all such as could hap, Madam,” said Le Despenser wearily. “I am escaped with life—if I have so ’scaped!—but with nought else. And I come now, only to look on your beloved faces, and to bid farewell.—Maybe a last farewell, my Lady!”
He stood looking into her face with his dark, sad eyes,—looking as if he believed indeed that it would be a last farewell. Constance was startled; and his mother’s theories broke down at once, and she sobbed out in an agony—
“O Tom, Tom! My lad, my last one!”
“You mean it, my Lord?” asked Constance, in a tone which showed that she was not wholly indifferent to the question.
“I mean it right sadly, my Lady.”
“But you go not hence this moment?”