"What is it, dame?" her husband asked, a little anxiously, turning to look at the girl.
"One of your girls, isn't it, dame?" said Miles, but at the same time thinking that she must have grown very tall during the last year or two.
"No, no, it is no girl of mine, but a stranger, who ran to me for help from the crowd, and she fell down just as you came up."
While she had been speaking, Dame Rankin had knelt down beside the prostrate figure and loosened the hood of the cloak, so as to give the girl air, and in that moment Miles caught sight of the face, and recognised it.
"Cicely! my Cicely!" he exclaimed, pushing Dame Rankin aside, and taking the girl into his arms once more.
She slowly opened her eyes, and looked at him, and a smile of ineffable joy and peace passed over her as she whispered, "Miles, take care of me,—don't let them take me back."
"Never, my darling, never," he said; and then he pressed the first lover's kiss upon her lips, and silently thanked God for His help and guidance in bringing him to her in her hour of need.
There was a little truckle-bed in one corner of the room, and he carried her to that; and then told Rankin something of the day's doings, and how he had sent for his sister to meet this lady when she should leave the convent, and how another had been imposed upon them instead of Mistress Cicely Guildford.
"How she came to be in the streets in this part of the town, I do not know, but, doubtless, she will tell us when she has somewhat recovered." And then Miles devoted himself to comforting and reassuring the frightened girl, who could not be persuaded that she was safe here from her persecutors; for it seemed that she had been made to suffer a great deal of unkind treatment, since she had told the abbess at Greenwich that she did not wish to become a nun, through having been able to read some portions of God's Word for herself.
These, of course, were from the translation of Miles, which he had copied, and given to her, and which she had taken with her to the convent, and lent to some of the other novices secretly, when she learned that such reading was not approved by her superiors.