Sir John sat meditating for a while; it had grown quite dark in the room as he muttered to himself. He rose now, rather cumbrously and uncertainly, but with a fine rousing snort of indignation.
"Zooks!" he said, "I prate like a death's-head. A thing done hath an end,
God have mercy on us all! And I will read no more of the rubbish."
He cast the packet into the heart of the fire; the yellow papers curled at the edges, rustled a little, and blazed; he watched them burn to the last spark.
"A cup of sack to purge the brain!" cried Sir John, and filled one to the brim. "And I will go sup with Doll Tearsheet."
* * * * *
SEPTEMBER 29, 1422
"Anoon her herte hath pitee of his wo, And with that pitee, love com in also; Thus is this quene in pleasaunce and in loye."
_Meanwhile had old Dome Sylvia returned contentedly to the helpmate whom she had accepted under compulsion, and who had made her a fair husband, as husbands go. It is duly recorded, indeed, on their shared tomb, that their forty years of married life were of continuous felicity, and set a pattern to all Norfolk. The more prosaic verbal tradition is that Lady Vernon retained Sir Robert well in hand by pointing out, at judicious intervals, that she had only herself to blame for having married such a selfish person in preference to a hero of the age and an ornament of the loftiest circles.
I find, on consultation of the Allonby records, that Sylvia Vernon died of a quinsy, in 1419, surviving Sir Robert by some three months. She had borne him four sons and four daughters: of these there remained at Winstead in 1422 only Sir Hugh Vernon, the oldest son, knighted by Henry V at Agincourt, where Vernon had fought with distinction; and Adelais Vernon, the youngest daughter, with whom the following has to do._