"What do you mean, dame?" said I. "Why should I look otherwise than well, or like one haunted by spectres?"
"For no reason that I know, Mistress," answered the old woman: "only fools will tell tales and other fools believe them. Nay, Meg, thou need not be making signs to me. 'Tis right Mistress Rosamond should know."
"Know what?" I asked. "You are all as mysterious as a miracle play this morning."
"There is no great mystery in the case," said Dame Lee. "The whole matter is this. The woman Patience Hollins, whom Madam Corbet sent away, has been telling everywhere that your step-dame obliged you to leave off your convent dress, and break your vows, that she might wed you to a needy kinsman of her own, and also that the very night the change was made your honored mother's spirit appeared to you, all surrounded with flames and burning sulphur, and reproached you with your disobedience, and declared that it had taken away her last hope of salvation. Patience says she saw herself the boards where the spirit had stood, and they were all burned black—and that she saw the ghost also at a distance, and smelled the sulphur."
"She saw the ghost as near as any one," said and with that I told them the tale as it was.
"Lo, did I not tell you as much!" said the dame, turning to her daughter. "The wicked wretch! She deserves to be hung! But is it true, Mistress Rosamond, that you are not going to be a nun, after all?"
"'Tis quite true," said I. "You know my brother is going to sea, and my father and mother naturally want me at home, and there are other reasons. But there was neither force nor persuasion in the case. It was left to myself to decide, and I have, as I believe, decided rightly."
"And I am glad on't with all my heart!" said Dame Lee, heartily. "I am no believer in shutting up young maids in convent walls. They may do for those who have no other home. But what can Patience mean by telling such tales?"
"She means to hide her own disgrace and dismissal, no doubt," said I. "She is a wicked woman, and I dare say will work me all the harm she can. I suppose the whole village is ringing with this absurd tale."
"I shall tell the truth about it wherever I go, you may be sure," said Dame Lee. "Mrs. Patience is not now my Lady's bower-woman, that I should dread her anger. She used to abuse my late Lady's ear with many a false tale, as she did about Meg here, because, forsooth, Meg would not wed her nephew. But I shall let people know what her legends are worth."