"I have been long, dear cousin," said Iola, "and kept you waiting; but I could not help it; for there was much to say."
"And you have been far," said Constance, gazing at her with inquiring looks; "for your gown is wet with dew--and torn moreover!"
"And my feet too with the brambles," answered Iola, sitting down, and uncovering her fair delicate feet and ancles. "My path has been almost as rough and thorny as that of the world, Constance. See how they have scratched me."
"But what did he say? What advice have you obtained?" demanded Constance, looking with no very serious commiseration at the scratches which streaked the pure white skin of her cousin.
"You don't pity me," said Iola, laughing. "You are a cruel girl."
"If the wounds of the world are not more serious than these, you will not deserve much pity," answered Constance. "I am anxious about graver things, Iola; but you are so light."
"Well, well, I will tell you," answered Iola. "Let me but put on these slippers, and get a little breath; for my heart has been beating somewhat more than needful. What counsel has he given, do you ask? How do you know that it was a man at all?--Well, I will own. It was a man, but an old one, Constance; and now I will tell you what he said. He said that a marriage contracted between infants was not lawful. That it was a corrupt custom which could not be justified, for that a reasonable consent was needful to make a marriage valid, consequently, that I am not bound at all by acts to which I gave no consent--the acts of others, not my own. He says moreover that religion itself forbids me to promise what I cannot perform."
Constance gazed at her with wonder and surprise. The view thus suddenly presented to her was so strange, so new, so contrary to the received notions and opinions of the time, that, at first, all seemed mist and darkness to her.
"This is extraordinary indeed!" she exclaimed. "This is extraordinary indeed! Who can it be, Iola, who thus ventures to set at defiance not merely the opinions of the world at large, but that of lawyers and fathers of the church, who have always held such contracts binding?"
"He says that it is not so," answered Iola. "He gave me many instances in which such contracts, especially between princes and high nobles, have been set at nought, where the church has treated them as things of no value, and lawyers have passed them over with little reverence. But I could tell you more extraordinary things than this, Constance. Men are beginning in this world to look with keen and searching eyes into these received opinions which you talk of, and to ask if they are founded on justice and right, or on ignorance, superstition, and craft. Light is streaming in upon darkness; and there is a day rising, of which I see the dawn, though I may never see the noon."