“Truly, but a year gone, for the christening of the young Lord Humphrey.”
“And liked it you to tell me if you wot at all of one Hawise Gerard among the Lady’s maidens?”
Maude awaited the answer in no little suppressed eagerness. She had loved Cousin Hawise; and if she yet lived, though apart, she would not feel herself so utterly alone. Perhaps they might even meet again, some day. But Bertram shook his head.
“I heard never the name,” he said. “The Lady of Buckingham her maidens be Mistress Polegna and Mistress Sarah (fictitious persons): their further names I wis not. But no Mistress Hawise saw I never.”
“I thank you much, Master Bertram, and will not stay you longer.”
But another shadow fell upon Maude’s life. Poor, pretty, gentle, timid Cousin Hawise! What had become of her? The next opportunity she had, Maude inquired from Bertram, “What like dame were my Lady of Buckingham’s greathood?”
Bertram shrugged his shoulders, as if the question took him out of his depth.
“Marry, she is a woman!” said he; “and all women be alike. There is not one but will screech an’ she see a spider.”
“Mistress Drew and Mother be not alike,” answered Maude, falling back on her own small experience. “Neither were Hawise and I alike. She would alway stay at holy Mary her image, to see if the lamp were alight; but I—the saints forgive me!—I never cared thereabout. So good was Cousin Hawise.”
“Maude,” suggested Bertram in a low voice, as if he felt half afraid of his own idea, “Countest that blessed Mary looketh ever her own self to wit if the lamp be alight?”