I managed to murmur that I had no wish to oppose the will of my parents and my kinsman; whereat my mother bent down and kissed my brow, saying with a little gentle mischief:
"See you, Sir Stephen, what a dutiful child we have here!"
"Aye, well broke, as old Job's horse, which would always go well on the road homeward," said my father, smiling. "But what think you my Lady Abbess will say, my Rose?"
"I fear she will be grieved," I answered; "but I could not have returned to her, at any rate. Sister Catherine will say it is just what she always expected!"
"I dare say she would fly at the chance herself, the old cat!" said my father. "Well, Rosamond, I am heartily glad your choice jumps so well with ours in this matter, for though I would have preferred Dick above many a richer and greater suitor, I would never wed a child of mine against her will. I saw enough of that in mine own mother's case, who lived and died a broken-hearted woman; aye, and that though my father would have coined his very heart's blood to save her. She was a model of wifely duty and reverence too, poor Lady, but the one thing my father longed for, that she could never give. Well, well! God bless thee, child, with all my heart: thou bast ever been a dutiful daughter to me and to her that is gone. Well, I must go see my Lord and Dick, who is pacing the maze like a caged lion. There will be need of a dispensation, and I know not what, beside the settlements for our heiress here. What think you, chick? Does Dick seek you for the sake of Aunt Rosamond's acres and woods?"
"Not he!" answered my mother for me. "One must have been an owl indeed not to see how matters were long before Rosamond had any title to acres or woods. I had a shrewd guess at it before ever I saw Rosamond herself, when our young squire used to linger beside me in London to talk of his cousin, when others were dancing. I thought then it would be a shame for the cloister to part two true lovers."
I could not but rejoice in my heart when I heard this, that Richard had preferred talking of me, even when his love must have been well-nigh hopeless, to dancing with those court ladies of whom Mistress Anne told me. I never did believe a word she said, the treacherous viper!
All this chanced only this very morning, and already it seems ages agone. Dick and I have had a long talk together down at the spring, where we used to have so many. How that place used to haunt my dreams in the convent! Father Fabian said 'twas a temptation of the devil, and I never would let my mind dwell on it in the day-time; but I could not hinder its coming back at night.
As we sat on our old moss-grown seat by the clear well, we saw a chaffinch—perhaps the very one Dick showed me on the eve of Alice's marriage—flying in and out among the bushes with its young brood. I took it for a good omen.
As we sat there, gazing down into the spring, a shadow fell on us, and looking up, there was Patience, my mother's bower-woman.