Just then the dame herself appeared at the door, and I could hardly repress a cry as I recognized in the tall spare figure, and strong but kindly features, one associated with the most solemn passage of all my life—one whom I last saw as the doors of St. Ethelburga's shrine closed on her—Magdalen Jewell! I saw too that she knew me, for she turned very pale. She has grown quite gray, and looks older and more bent, but the repressed fire still shines in her eyes as when she bade Queen Catherine and the rest of us welcome to her cottage at Torfoot. I put my finger on my lip, and I saw she comprehended the signal. She asked us into the cottage, and placed seats for us with all her old courtesy; and while I was puzzling my brains how to begin, she relieved me of my trouble in the most natural way possible.
"I knew not that our young lady of the manor was to be one whom I had seen before!" said she. "You are most welcome, madam, to my poor cottage."
Then to Warner, who looked surprised: "I used to live some way from the convent where the lady was educated, and have seen her both in the church and at the convent gate, helping the kind ladies distribute their alms."
"And I was at your cottage on the moor with good Queen Catherine and her bower-woman," I added. "Do you not remember?"
"I do, though I knew not then it was the Queen!" answered Magdalen. "Do you know, madam, how it fares with that good lady?"
I told her very ill, I feared; and then spoke of the work she had taken in hand.
"Aye, 'tis little I can do!" she answered, "Yet every little helps, and the poor maids are out-of-the-way at home. They take well enough to spinning and making of nets, and I would fain teach them to sew, but needles and thread are so hard to come by, that the mothers do not like to waste them in such little hands!"
I told her I would supply her with both, if she would come up to the house. I was burning with a desire to see her alone.
"Is not the air here bad for your health?" I ventured to ask her.
"Nay, I think not," she answered, taking my meaning at once. "I have had no trouble heretofore."