“Grant me one further mercy, Sire,” she said in a low voice, looking up to him:—“the one greater grace of death.”
“Fair Cousin, we would fain grant you abundant grace, so you put it not from you with your own perversity. We have proffered unto you full restorance to our favour, and to endow you with every of your late Lord’s lands, on condition only of your obedience in one small matter. We take of you neither life nor liberty.”
“Life? no!—only all that maketh life worthy the having.”
“We wist not, fair Cousin, that our cousin of Kent were so precious,” replied the King, with the faintest accent of satire in his calm, polished voice.
But Custance, like a spring let loose, had returned to her previous mood.
“What, take you nought from me but only him?” she cried indignantly. “Is it not rather mine own good name whereof you would undo me? Ye have bereaved me of him already. I tare him from mine heart long ago, though I tare mine own heart in the doing of it. He is not worth the love I have wasted on him, and have repreved (denied, rejected) thereof one ten thousand times his better! God assoil (forgive) my blindness!—for mine eyes be opened now. But you, Sire,—you ask of me that I shall sign away mine own honourable name and my child’s birthright, and as bribe to bid me thereunto, you proffer me my lands! What saw you ever in Custance of Langley to give you the thought that she should thus lightly sell her soul for gold, or weigh your paltry acres in the balances against her truth and honour?”
Every nerve of the outraged soul was quivering with excitement. In the calm even tones which responded, there was no more excitement than in an iceberg.
“Fair Cousin, you do but utterly mistake. The matter is done and over; nor shall your ’knowledgment thereof make but little difference. ’Tis neither for our own sake, neither for our cousin of Kent, but for yours, that we would fain sway you unto a better mind. Nor need you count, fair Cousin, that your denial should let by so much as one day our cousin of Kent his bridal with the Lady Lucy. We do you to wit that you stand but in your own light. Your marriage is annulled. What good then shall come of your ’knowledgment, saving your own easement? But for other sake, if ye do persist yet in your unwisdom, we must needs make note of you as a disobedient subject.”
There was silence again, only broken by the quiet regular dripping of the water-clock in a corner of the room. Silence, until Custance sank slowly on her knees, and buried her face upon the cushion of the settle.
“God, help me; for I have none other help!” sobbed the agitated voice. “Help me to make this unceli (miserable) choice betwixt wrong and wrong, betwixt sorrow and sorrow!”