But now the dawn was come, and from far overhead a charming voice saluted her waking ears.
She looked up. A fair head crowned with morning was thrust between the close-set spikes. A young man with the bravest eyes in the world was gazing down compassionately upon her.
“Oh, mistress!”
Almost involuntarily she drew the cloak which had been given her the closer about her aches. But it was not possible to conceal her pathetic, her terrible distress.
“Oh, mistress!”
For the third time the charming voice saluted her ears, not mockingly, not unkindly, not even curiously. In it was a gentleness, a subtle power of sympathy that, do as she would, started her tears anew. She drew the cloak closer about her shoulders, as if by so doing she could conceal the fact that she had been used very grievously.
“You have been a-weeping, mistress.”
It was idle to deny a fact so plain.
Yesterday she would have met this boldness in a very different way. But that was past. In one long night of intolerable anguish her very nature had suffered a change.
“For why do you weep, mistress?”