Chapter Eight.
Moves on the Chessboard.
“O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for themselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true!”
Tennyson.
Three months had rolled away since that thirteenth of January which had made Constance a widow. Her versatile, volatile nature soon recovered the shock of her husband’s violent death. The white garments of widowhood which draped her found little response either in the gravity of her demeanour or in the expression of her face. But on the Dowager Lady the effect was very different. She became an old, infirm woman all at once; but her manner was softer and gentler. She learned to make more allowance for temperaments which entirely differed from hers. There were no further efforts to repress her little grandson’s noisy glee, no more cold responses to his occasionally troublesome demonstrations of affection. The alteration was quiet, but lasting.
It was an hour after dinner, and Maude sat alone at work in the banquet-hall. She was almost unconsciously humming to herself the air of a troubadour chanson—an air as well-known to ourselves as to her, though we have turned it into a hymn tune, and have christened it Innocents, or Durham. A fresh stave was just begun, when the hall door opened, and a voice at the further end announced—
“A messenger from my Lord of Aumerle!”
Maude rose as the messenger approached her.
“Your servant, sir! If you bear any letter, I will carry the same unto my Lady.”
“Here is the letter, Mistress Maude,” replied the messenger with a smile. “Methinks I am more changed than you be.”
Maude looked more narrowly at him.