“Ah, Nib!—but how if God charge them on thy back at the last?”
“Good lack! a white lie or twain, spiced with a little matter of frowardness by times! My back is broad enough.”
“I am fain to hear it, for so is not mine.”
“Ah! thou art secular—no marvel.”
“Much thanks for thy glosing (flattery), mine holy sister!” said Custance sarcastically. “The angels come down from Heaven, to set thee every morrow in a bath of rose-water, trow? While I, poor sinner that I am, having been twice wed, may journey to Heaven as best I can in the mire. ’Tis well, methinks, there be some secular in the world, for these monks and nuns be so holy that elsewise there were no use for God’s mercy.”
“Nay, Custance!”
“Well, have it as thou wilt, child! What matter?” returned her cousin with a weary air. “I am no doctor of the schools, to break lances with thee. Only methinks I have learned, these last months, a lesson or twain, which maybe even thy holiness were not the worser to spell over. Now let me be.”
Isabel thought that the victim was coming round by degrees, and she wisely forbore to press her beyond the point to which she chose to go of herself. So the interview ended. It was not till October that they met again.
Maude fancied that Avice eschewed any renewal of intercourse with her. She kept herself strictly secluded in the chamber which had been allotted to the nuns; and since Maude had no power to pass beyond the door of the guard-room, the choice lay in Avice’s own hands. At neither of the subsequent interviews was she present.
“Well, fair Cousin! what cheer?” was Isabel’s greeting, when she presented herself anew.