“There is no cause for your travail (trouble, vexation), Dame Lyngern,” she said calmly. “The writ bare date but on Sunday, and you were wed the even afore; so you be no wise touched.—Marry, Custance, thou seest that so being, my Lord of Kent—and thou likewise—be left free to wed; wherefore it pleased the King’s Grace, of his rare goodness, to commend him unto the Lady Lucy of Milan by way of marriage. They shall be wed this next January.”
Isabel spoke as quietly as people generally do who are not personally concerned in the calamity they proclaim. But perhaps she hardly anticipated what followed. Her eyes were scarcely ready for the sight of that white livid face, quivering in every nerve with human agony, nor her ears for the fierce cry which broke from the parched bloodless lips.
“Thou liest!”
Isabel shrank back with a look of uneasy apprehension in her round rosy face.
“Nay, burden not me withal, Custance! ’Tis no work of mine. I am but a messenger.”
“Poor fool! I shall not harm thee! But whose messenger art?”
“The King’s Grace himself bade me to see thee.”
“And tell me that?”
“He bade me do thee to wit so much.”
“‘So much’—how much? What I have heard hath killed me. Hast yet ill news left to bury me withal?”