And now her cheeks were like warm russet apples and her shoulders were broad.
"You are the Dame at the Farm!" said the woman, "and I thought you young!"
"It may be, dear sister, that when we meet again I shall be younger still," she said, and her voice was like the tolling of sweet bells across the autumn fields, "for then age will be neither here nor there!"
Now she was again the young Countess among her maidens, and what had passed might have been a dream.
Yet as she of the silver coronet passed slowly into a sweet sleep, where bees hummed and soft chanting from the chapel mourned the dead, she caught the hand of her who stood by the bed and questioned her.
"Tell me, mother and sister," she whispered, "why in my lessons, I must ever find the truth under such strange forms? Why do you who must teach me wear the garments of another age, another country?"
Now a trouble came over the face of the Countess and she shivered in the moonlight.
"Ask me not, sister and daughter—and yet I must answer if thou ask me, who wearest a crown. I cannot tell why this is laid upon me—although it is well known to be so. Nor have any but a wonderful and holy few learned in any other wise. I cannot tell ... sometimes I think that though the lessons were set in each dish and coat and friendly hand of everyday—as Our Lady knows they are, for the matter of that!—you cannot read them, out there. They are too plain, perhaps. So all must be put before the eyes too full for sight in a manner (as one should call it) quaint. Though truly one thing has never been more quaint than another! But I do not speak clearly.... Good night, my sister."
Now she heard a sob and knew it was from young Gildres.
"Shall I never see her again, then, my lady?" he whispered.