"Therefore the more 'Blessed is she which hath believed.' 'Nyl ye fere: only believe.'"
"Believe what?" said Beatrice, with a dreary sigh, suppressed when half drawn.
"Believe nothing, Mistress Beatrice," replied Lawrence with a soft intonation which Guenllian had noticed to come into his voice only when he spoke to Beatrice. "'Believe in God, and believe in Me.' It is not what we must believe; it is whom. And whom is far easier than what. To believe a thing or a doctrine taketh the head only; but to believe a man, and that the Man that died for you, this methinks taketh the heart belike. Trust and love be right near akin. And hearts be soft, while heads be hard to deal withal. Matters be apt to steal into the heart ere you shall wit it, which should take many a weary hour to beat into the head."
"Neither come they so easy out when they be once lodged therein," added Guenllian.
"You speak soothly, Mistress Wenteline," answered Lawrence.
But now the procession moved on again, and they with it. Into the great hall of the Castle they slowly filed, and there found a most effective dramatic scene prepared to meet them.
The Countess Alianora sat on the daïs, robed in pure white, the earliest garb of widowhood, which covered so much of the face that only the features were left visible in the midst. But she had chosen to hide everything by an embroidered handkerchief, in which her eyes were concealed. There she sat, the image of inconsolable woe and utter desolation, while Consolation, in the person of the Lord Charlton of Powys leaned over her chair and tried to gain a hearing. Terrible sobs were rending her breast, and she seemed quite unable to speak. When at last she managed to rise and approach the coffin,—leaning on the arm of Lord Powys, which appeared absolutely necessary for her support,—she had scarcely taken the sprinkler from the hand of her chaplain when she dropped it and sank down in a faint. Of course Lord Powys caught her: could he as a knight or a person of any humanity have permitted a lady to drop to the floor? But Guenllian was so misguided as to allow herself to see that her mistress took care in fainting not to entangle herself in her train, and that she dropped the sprinkler in such a position that it should not damage her new velvet.
"She hath swooned right away!" exclaimed Beatrice in a pitying tone. She did not see through the stained glass of Alianora's beautiful and becoming attitudes.
"It is not ill played," was Guenllian's answer, in a rather constrained tone.
That evening, when Guenllian and Beatrice attended the coucher of the afflicted widow, it fell to the lot of the latter to remove the used handkerchief from the pocket of her lady's dress, and place it in the buck-basket which contained the articles ready for the wash.