“‘And thus hath Christ unwemmed kept Custance’!”
“What matter, wife?” said Bertram in a tone of sudden apprehension.
“No matter any more!” replied Maude, lifting her white face. “Master Sheriff, she was dying ere you came to prison her,—on a sendel thread (a linen cloth of the finest quality) hung her life: but ere you touched her, God snapped yon thread, and set her free.”
Ay, what matter?—though they seized on the poor relic of mortality which had once been Constance Le Despenser?—though the mean vengeance was taken of leaving her coffin unburied for four dreary years? “After that, they had no more that they could do.” It was only the withered leaves that were left in their hands; the White Rose was free.
“What shall become of the young ladies, Master Sheriff?”
“Nay,” growled the surly official, “the hen being departed, I lack nought of the chicks. They may go whither it list them; only this Castle and all therein is confiscate.”
Maude turned to Isabel, now a tall statuesque maiden of sixteen years.
“I shall send to my Lord, of force,” she answered coldly, “and desire that he come and fetch me hence.”
“And your sister, the Lady Alianora?”
The child was kneeling by the side of her dead mother, wrapped in unutterable grief. Isabel cast a contemptuous glance upon her.