"May the Lord receive the sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, and to the benefit both of us and of his holy church."
"Amen!" whispered a low voice, and the soft eyes unclosed all dim with tears.
No murmur escaped her lips, no regret was ever spoken, but fairer and frailer in her rare loveliness, the old man trembled as he watched her, and he cried in the bitterness of his agony,
"Save me, O God! for the waters are come in even unto my soul."
It was Holy-week, the most solemn of the Lenten season, and Beatrice Mohun knelt in the old cathedral during the impressive Tenebrae, and as the fourteen candles were extinguished, and the solemn Miserere rose, from the depths of her heart came the prayer:
"Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up."
And the pervading gloom corresponded with her own spirit; her life owned no brightness, and the one tie left her seemed fast wearing away. Trouble had weakened the iron constitution of Sir Ralph; for more exhausting than mere physical pain is the ceaseless care that preys upon the vitals, claiming life as its tribute.
He felt that he could buy back ease and comfort for his darling, and he knew that for him earth held but a very few years; but to obtain all this, he must barter his honor, yield his creed, and the old blood still owned the fierceness of a changeless fidelity. No Mohun had ever swerved, not even in the dark days of the last Tudor, nor after, when his graceless daughter held the sceptre. And now, though bereft of home, with his gallant sons lying far from their kindred, his fair young daughter life-wrecked, his own existence a burden, when even starvation mocked them, the loyal spirit knew no change; but staunchly by the old faith, true to the weak king, the brave knight still fought his adverse destiny.
And Beatrice came back through the darkness, and leaned against the couch on which her father lay.
"Come to me, little one; for I fear that you are not as strong as in the days when wild Bess bore you to the hunt. Have you any regrets for the past, my darling?"