[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
Aug. 30—the day after.
THE formalities are all arranged, and to-morrow I shall be a wedded wife. The matter has been hurried for Harry's sake, because he must sail so soon, and also because my Lord will take my Lady to her own old home, which she yearns to see again. Perhaps they may also go abroad in search of a milder climate, though the disturbed state of affairs makes that doubtful.
We are to keep house at the Court till they return, and then go to our own house at Coombe Ashton. I would like to live awhile at least at Tremador, for my heart is drawn to my people there, and perhaps we shall do so. I am glad my mother has Joyce, who gains on our hearts every day. She is very loving and easily swayed, though, as was to be expected, she has many faults, the worst of which, in my mother's eyes and mine, is a want of truth. If she commits any fault or meets any mishap, she will lie to hide it.
My mother says it is just what she should expect in any one so severely handled as Joyce has been, and she believes it may be overcome by kindness and wise treatment: and she did yesterday come to my mother, bringing a drinking glass she had broken. Nobody saw her do it, and the mishap might have been laid on that universal scape-goat, the cat; so we think it a hopeful sign.
She was overwhelmed with grief when she found I was going away as well as Harry, and I could hardly pacify her by promises of visits and what not. She would fain have bestowed on me her greatest treasure, the Spanish cat, bringing it in her arms with her eyes running over with tears: but I showed her that 'twould be unkind to Cousin Joslyn to part with his present, and that Puss would be unhappy away from her, and proposed instead, that as she can really spin wonderful well, she should make me some hanks of fine woollen thread for my knitting; whereat she was comforted. She is a dear maid, all the more engaging from her odd blending of the young child and the woman.
There are only two things to make me at all uncomfortable. One is that I have had a most sad and reproachful letter from dear Mother Superior. She regards my marriage as nothing less than sacrilege, and implores me to cast off my betrothed husband and return to the arms of my Heavenly Spouse who will receive me even now; and if I am faithful in penance and prayer, may make me all the brighter saint for this sacrifice.
But that is not the worst of it. She says she has heard that both my step-dame and Lady Stanton are infected with the new doctrine. She says that she has it from a sure hand that my mother was in London a constant associate of my Lady Denny and other well-known heretics, and was believed to have sent relief both in money and food to heretics under sentence in the common prisons. She lays all my apostasy, as she calls it, to the account of my Lady Corbet, and implores me to fly from the tyranny and ill-guidance of my cruel step-dame to the arms of my true Mother.