“Yet he has friends at Court, or so said my father.”

“Aye, aye, such folks have ever friends—­their money buys them; though mayhap an ill day is at hand for him and his likes.  Well, your poor father is gone, God knows how, though I thought for long that would be his end, who ever spoke his mind, or more; and you with your wealth are the morsel that tempts Maldon’s appetite.  And now what is to be done?  This is a hard case.  Would you refuge in some other Nunnery?”

“Nay,” answered Cicely, glancing sideways at her lover.

“Then what’s to be done?”

“Oh!  I know not,” she said, bursting into a fit of weeping.  “How can I tell you, who am mazed with grief and doubt?  I had but a single friend—­my father, though at times he was a rough one.  Yet he loved me in his way, and I have obeyed his last counsel;” and, all her courage gone, she sank into a chair and rocked herself to and fro, her head resting on her hands.

“That is not true,” said Emlyn in her bold voice.  “Am I who suckled you no friend, and is Father Necton here no friend, and is Sir Christopher no friend?  Well, if you have lost your judgment, I have kept mine, and here it is.  Yonder, not two bowshots away, stands a church, and before me I see a priest and a pair who would serve for bride and bridegroom.  Also we can rake up witnesses and a cup of wine to drink your health; and after that let the Abbot of Blossholme do his worst.  What say you, Sir Christopher?”

“You know my mind, Nurse Emlyn; but what says Cicely?  Oh!  Cicely, what say you?” and he bent over her.

She raised herself, still weeping, and, throwing her arms about his neck, laid her head upon his shoulder.

“I think it is the will of God,” she whispered, “and why should I fight against it, who am His servant?—­and yours, Chris.”

“And now, Father, what say you?” asked Emlyn, pointing to the pair.

“I do not think there is much to say,” answered the old clergyman, turning his head aside, “save that if it should please you to come to the church in ten minutes’ time you will find a candle on the altar, and a priest within the rails, and a clerk to hold the book.  More we cannot do at such short notice.”

Then he paused for a while, and, hearing no dissent, walked down the hall and out of the door.

Emlyn took Cicely by the hand, led her to a room that was shown to them, and there made her ready for her bridal as best she might.  She had no fine dress in which to clothe her, nor, indeed, would there have been time to don it.  But she combed out her beautiful brown hair, and, opening that box of Eastern jewels which were the great pride of the Foterells—­being the rarest and the most ancient in all the countryside—­she decked her with them.  On her broad brow she set a circlet from which hung sparkling diamonds that had been brought, the story said, by her mother’s ancestor, a Carfax, from the Holy Land, where once