I saw Father Simon's face darken at this gibe, but the bishop only smiled.
"'Tis said the chantries are next to go," continued the Duchess, in the same gay voice. "I much wonder, my lord, what kind of reception you expect to meet with in Purgatory. Will not the poor souls who are waiting to be sung out of their pains fall upon him who hath so cruelly deprived them of their means of escape?"
"Let me remind you, my love, that these are hardly fit subjects for jesting," said the Duke, gently. "My lord, have you seen his majesty within a day. His physician, Dr. Butts, tells me he is ill at ease."
Thus he turned the talk into another channel, while my mistress, though she seemed to pout for a moment, soon recovered her gayety, and began again chatting on indifferent subjects. As for the bishop, he never showed one particle of annoyance either at this time or on other similar occasions. But "what was fristed was not forgotten," as old ladies used to say, and he made the sweet lady pay dearly for her gibes: marry, 'twas through no good will of his that she did not atone for them with her life.
When the company were gone, my mistress bade me sit down to the instrument and play and sing to divert her and her husband. I did my best, and her Grace was pleased to praise me very highly, saying that my voice was one of the finest she had ever heard.
"The voice is not the only beauty," said the Duke. "Mistress Corbet sings with expression, without which the best voice is 'but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal,' as the apostle says. What other songs do you know?"
I told him not many, as I had learned in the convent, where we had none but sacred music. He then bade some one fetch a book of French Psalms from which I had been playing, and he was pleased to join his voice with me in some of them.
"These psalms are greatly sung in France," said he. "One hears them both in palace and cottage. I would some one would do as much for the psalms in English, that they might replace the ribaldry one hears every where."
"It may be done some time—who knows?" said the Duchess. "Go you abroad to-night, my sweet lord?"
"I must needs do so, since the king commands," he answered. "And what will you do?"