How invitingly the words fell on the lonely heart, so long left to fight its own battles!  There came for the first time the full sense of what life might be, the shielding tenderness, the sure reliance, the pure affection, such as she saw Henry lavish on the shallow Queen, but which she could meet and requite in John.  The brutal Boemond, the childish Malcolm, had aroused no feeling in her but dislike or pity, and to them a convent was infinitely preferable; but Bedford—­the religious, manly, brave, unselfish Bedford—­opened to her the view of all that could content a high-souled woman’s heart, backed, moreover, by the wonder of having been the first to touch such a spirit.

It would not have been a mesalliance.  Her family was one of the grandest of the Netherlands; the saintly Emperor, Henry of Luxemburg, was her ancestor; and Bedford’s proposal was not a condescension such as to rouse her sense of dignity.  His rank did not strike her as did his lofty stainless character; the like of which she had never known to exist in the world of active life till she saw the brothers of England, who came more near to the armed saints and holy warriors of Church legend than her fancy had thought mortal man could do, bred as she had been in the sensual, violent, and glittering Burgundy of the fifteenth century.  In truth, as Malcolm had thought the cloister the only refuge from the harshness and barbarism of Scotland, so Esclairmonde had thought piety and purity to be found nowhere else; and both had found the Court of Henry V. an infinitely better world than they had supposed possible; but, until the present moment, Esclairmonde had never felt the slightest call to take a permanent place there.  Now however the cloister, even if it were open to her, presented a gloomy, cheerless life of austerity, in comparison with human affection and matronly duty.  And most vivid of all at the moment was the desire to awaken the tender sweetness that slept in those steady gray eyes, to see the grave, wise visage gleam with smiling affection, and to rest in having one to take thought for her, and finish this long term of tossing about and self-defence.  Was not the patience with which he kept his eyes away from her already a proof of his consideration and delicate kindness?

But deep in Esclairmonde’s soul lay the sense that her dedication was sacred, and her power over herself gone.  She had always felt a wife’s allegiance due to Him whom she received as her spiritual Spouse; and though the sense at this moment only brought her disappointment and self-reproach, her will was loyal.  The bond was cutting into her very flesh, but she never even thought of breaking it; and all she waited for was the power of restraining her grateful tears.