‘Oh, I am glad you came to us English!’ cried Alice.  ’Only I would it had been my father who welcomed you.  And now?’

’Now I remain with my lady, as the only demoiselle she has from her country; and, moreover, I am waiting in the trust that my kinsmen will give up their purpose of bestowing me in marriage, now that I am beyond their reach; and in time I hope to obtain sufficient of my own goods for a dowry for whatever convent I may enter.’

‘Oh, let it be an English one!’ cried Alice.

‘I have learnt to breathe freer since I have been on English soil,’ said Esclairmonde, smiling; ‘but where I may rest at last, Heaven only knows!’

‘This is a strange country,’ said Malcolm.  ’No one seems afraid of violence and wrong here.’

‘Is that so strange?’ asked Alice, amazed.  ’Why, men would be hanged if they did violence!’

‘I would we were as sure of justice at my home,’ sighed Esclairmonde.  ‘King Henry will bring about a better rule.’

‘Never doubt,’ cried Salisbury’s daughter.  ’When France is once subdued, there will be no more trouble, he will make your kinsmen do you right, dear demoiselle, and oh! will you not found a beauteous convent?’

‘King Henry has not conquered France yet,’ was all Esclairmonde said.

‘Ha!’ cried the buxom Countess Jaqueline, as the ladies dismounted, ’never speak to me more, our solemn sister.  When have I done worse than lure a young cavalier, and chain him all day with my tongue?’

‘He is a gentle boy!’ said Esclairmonde, smiling.

’Truly he looked like a calf turned loose among strange cattle!  How gat he into the hall?’

‘He is of royal Scottish blood,’ said Esclairmonde ’cousin-german to King James.’

’And our grave nun has a fancy to tame the wild Scots, like a second St. Margaret!  A king’s grandson! fie, fie! what, become ambitious, Clairette?  Eh? you were so occupied, that I should have been left to no one but Monseigneur of Gloucester, but that I was discreet, and rode with my Lord Bishop of Winchester.  How he chafed! but I know better than to have tete-a-tetes with young sprigs of the blood royal!’

Esclairmonde laughed good-humouredly, partly in courtesy to her hoyden mistress, but partly at the burning, blushing indignation she beheld in the artless face of Alice Montagu.

The girl was as shy as a fawn, frightened at every word from knight or lady, and much in awe of her future mother-in-law, a stiff and stately dame, with all the Beaufort haughtiness; so that Lady Westmoreland gladly and graciously consented to the offer of the Demoiselle de Luxemburg to attend to the little maiden, and let her share her chamber and her bed.  And indeed Alice Montagu, bred up in strictness and in both piety and learning, as was sometimes the case with the daughters of the nobility, had in all her simplicity and bashfulness a purity and depth that made her a congenial spirit with the grave votaress, whom she regarded on her side with a young girl’s enthusiastic admiration for a grown woman, although in point of fact the years between them were few.