‘Then surely,’ said Malcolm, ’the hoards of deep study within the mind are treasures beyond the earth.’

‘Your schoolmen speak of spirit, mind, and body,’ said Esclairmonde—­’at least so I, an ignorant woman, have been told.  Should not the true Light for eternity lighten the spirit rather than the mind?’

Malcolm pondered and said:  ’I thought I had found the right path at last!’

‘Nay—­never, never did I say otherwise,’ cried Esclairmonde.  ’To seek God’s Light in good men’s words, and pursue it, must be a blessed task.  Every task must be blessed to which He leads.  And when you are enlightened with that light, you will hold it up to others.  When you have found the treasure, you will scatter it here, and so lay it up above.’

Esclairmonde’s words were almost a riddle to Malcolm, but his reverence for her made him lay them up deeply, as he watched her kneeling at the Mass, her upturned face beaming with an angelic expression.

His mind was much calmed by this meeting.  It had had an absolutely contrary effect to what King James had expected, by spiritualizing his love, and increasing that reverence which cast out its earthliness.  That first throb which had been so keen at meeting, and knowing her not for him, had passed away in the refining of that distant worship he had paid her in those days of innocence.

Lady Montagu was quite satisfied with him now.  He was the Malcolm of her first acquaintance, only without his foolish diffidence, and with a weight and earnestness that made him a man and not a boy; and she cordially invited him to bring his sister with him, and rest, on the way southward.  He agreed most thankfully, since this would be the only opportunity of showing Esclairmonde and Lilias one to the other, as well as one of his own few chances of seeing Esclairmonde.

Once they must meet, that their promises might be restored the one to the other; but as the betrothal remained the lady’s security, this could not be done till she became pledged at St. Katharine’s.  When the opportunity came, she was to send Malcolm a messenger, and he would come to her at once.  Until then he promised that he would not leave Great Britain.

On Monday the cousins proceeded, coming after a time to the route by which Malcolm had ridden three years before, and where he was now at home in comparison with Patrick.  How redolent it was with recollections of King Harry, in all his gaiety and grace, ere the shock of his brother’s death had fallen on him!  At Thirsk, Malcolm told of the prowess and the knighthood of honest Trenton and Kitson, to somewhat incredulous ears.  The two squires had been held as clownish fellows, and the sentiment of the country was that Mistress Agnes was well quit of them, and the rough guardianship by which they had kept off all other suitors.  As mine host concluded, ‘’Tis a fine thing to go to the wars.’

Hearing that Kitson’s mother lived not a mile out of his way, Malcolm rode to the fine old moated grange, where he found her sitting at her spinning, presiding over a great plentiful household, while her second son, a much shrewder-looking man than Sir Christopher, managed the farm.