Often in these blissful hours her way was almost like a child’s, she was so tender and so clinging. At times her beauteous, great eyes were full of an imploring which made them seem soft with tears, and thus they were now as she looked up at him.
“I will do all I can,” she said. “I will obey every law, I will pray often and give alms, and strive to be dutiful and—holy, that in the end He will not thrust me from you; that I may stay near—even in the lowest place, even in the lowest—that I may see your face and know that you see mine. We are so in His power, He can do aught with us; but I will so obey Him and so pray that He will let me in.”
To Anne she went with curious humility, questioning her as to her religious duties and beliefs, asking her what books she read, and what services she attended.
“All your life you have been a religious woman,” she said. “I used to think it folly, but now—”
“But now—” said Anne.
“I know not what to think,” she answered. “I would learn.”
But when she listened to Anne’s simple homilies, and read her weighty sermons, they but made her restless and unsatisfied.
“Nay, ’tis not that,” she said one day, with a deep sigh. “’Tis more than that; ’tis deeper, and greater, and your sermons do not hold it. They but set my brain to questioning and rebellion.”
But a short time elapsed before the marriage was solemnised, and such a wedding the world of fashion had not taken part in for years, ’twas said. Royalty honoured it; the greatest of the land were proud to count themselves among the guests; the retainers, messengers, and company of the two great houses were so numerous that in the west end of the town the streets wore indeed quite a festal air, with the passing to and fro of servants and gentlefolk with favours upon their arms.
’Twas to the Tower of Camylott, the most beautiful and remote of the bridegroom’s several notable seats, that they removed their household, when the irksomeness of the extended ceremonies and entertainments were over—for these they were of too distinguished rank to curtail as lesser personages might have done. But when all things were over, the stately town houses closed, and their equipages rolled out beyond the sight of town into the country roads, the great duke and his great duchess sat hand in hand, gazing into each other’s eyes with as simple and ardent a joy as they had been but young ’prentice and country maid, flying to hide from the world their love.