She dried the drops raining from her eyes, saying in a voice that expressed how occupied she was by her own emotion, "I am a sinful woman; well do these tones remind me of the same: those days are quite, quite gone, even from the memory of all; but once they were as the present hour, when so he spoke, and I was lost, and still am lost; for, through hunger and cold and shame, I love, and cannot quite repent. Will the hour ever come when I can regret that once I was happy?"
Many, many sad years had passed since words like these had dropped from poor Jane's lips; her feelings fed on her, possessed her, but she had been mute; overflowing now, her accent was calm; she spoke as if she was unaware that her thoughts framed speech, and that she had an auditor.
"You have paid a dear penalty, and are surely forgiven," said York, striving in his compassion to find the words that might be balm to her.
"Prince," she continued, "some time ago,—I have lost all date; now the chasm seems nought, now a long eternity; it was when my poor heart knew nothing of love, save its strong necessity and its delight; methought I would see your father's fair offspring, for I loved them for his sake. At the festival of Easter I placed myself near the gate of the royal chapel: I thought to be unseen. The happy queen held her sons each by the hand; you were then, as now, his image, a little sportive blue-eyed cherub. The prince of Wales had his mother's look: her large, dark eye, her soft, rosy mouth, her queenlike brow; her beauty which had won Edward, her chaste sweetness, which had made her his wife; my presence—I thought to conceal it better—was revealed. The queen turned her face away; there was anguish surely written there, for the prince darted on me a look of such withering scorn—yes, even he—his stainless, fair brow was knit, his bright angel's face clouded: the look sank in my heart. Edward's beautiful, pure child reproved me, hated me: for three days I felt that I would never see the deluder more: you do not share his abhorrence; you do not hate the pale ghost of Shore's wife?"
Such clinging to the past, such living memory of what was so absolutely dead to all except herself, awe-struck the prince: "We are all sinners in the eye of God," he said, "but thy faults are surely forgiven thee, gentle one: thy tears have washed every trace away, and my brother, my poor murdered Edward, now blesses thee. Alas! would that I could soften this last stage of your suffering earthly life."
"'Tis better as it is," she answered hastily, "once I felt disgrace and privation keenly; perhaps that may atone. Now, would it were more bitter, that so I might wean myself from him whose very memory will lose my soul. You are good, and Our Lady will requite you. Now, listen: the damsel Monina and Master O'Water have gone towards Southend: your remaining friends watch for you here. I shall see them again to-night: meanwhile it is to be feared that Clifford plots vengeance, and you must fly; you must at every hazard go towards Southend. Beyond the town, on the lone sands, there is a wooden cross, telling where one escaped dreadful peril through the might of Him who died on it for us; the smallest sign, the waving of your cap, will be watched for by the Adalid, they will send a boat to take you on board. Now swiftly depart: your life hangs on the hour; this purse will furnish you with means Lady Brampton left it for you."
"Bless me, mother, ere I go."
"Can a sinner's blessing avail? fear rather that God punish me through you, where my heart is garnered. Oh, may He indeed bless and save you; and I shall die in peace."
He kissed her withered hand and was gone; she dragged her failing limbs to the casement; he was already lost among the straggling tenements that bounded her field.
Again York was flying from his foe; again studying to elude pursuit, with how different feelings. Before, his flight was peremptory, for the preservation of others, while he blindly longed to deliver himself to slavery. Now liberty, for its own dear sake, was worth the world to him. He had tasted to its dregs the misery of captivity, and loathed the very name; whatever might betide, he would never submit willingly again to one hour's thraldom. He felt his dagger's hilt; he drew it from the sheath, and eyed its polished blade with gladness; for eight months he had been living unarmed, under the perpetual keeping of armed jailors; what wonder that he looked on this sharp steel as the key to set him free from every ill.