Saucy Mistress Maud saw the look, and said instantly, "Cicely is not here; she has gone to the Convent of St. Francis."
"Gone to the convent!" repeated Miles. "When will she be back?"
It was the girl's turn to exclaim now, "Whenever does a girl come back from a convent?"
"But you mean she has gone to pay a visit for the day to one of the lay sisters," said Miles, in a tone of trembling anxiety.
The tremble in the young man's voice arrested the girl's attention, and, though she was only a girl, she felt there was trouble in store for the friend whom they had all learned to love. She put down the herbs she had been gathering, and came close to where he was standing. "I don't think Cicely liked it," she whispered; "at the very last I saw her crying several times, and I wished you would come, for I thought, perhaps, if you knew you might—"
"Yes, yes; but tell me, she has not gone to become a nun?" panted Miles.
The girl nodded. "You see the Queen liked her, and that is always what she wishes for her favourites,—that they should join a sisterhood. She would become a nun herself if she could."
"Well, I heartily wish she would then, and perhaps when she knew what it was like she would leave young girls to live a natural life."
He spoke very bitterly; and Maud Guildford could only look and wonder, for she had never seen the young secretary in this mood before.
While they were standing there Lady Guildford came into the garden; and, when Miles had bowed and greeted her, he asked quickly why Cicely had gone to the convent.