‘To her own lover?’

’No, to a brewer at Winchester!  I say not that you could ever be like poor sister Bridget, but only that the cloister has no charm to still the heart—­prayer and duty can do as much without as within.’

‘When we deemed her worthy, I was glad of his happiness,’ said Lucy, thoughtfully.

’You did, my dear, and I rejoiced.  Think now how grievous it must be with her, if she, as I fear she may, yielded her heart to those who told her that to ensnare him was her duty, or if indeed she were as much deceived as he.’

‘Then she will soon be comforted,’ said Lucy, still with some bitterness in her voice; bitterness of which she herself was perhaps conscious, for suddenly dropping in her knees, she hid her face, and cried.  ’Oh, help me to pray for her, Aunt Cecily, and that I may do her wrong no more!’

And Cecily, in her low conventual chant, sang, almost under her breath, the noonday Latin hymn, the words of which, long familiar to Lucy, had never as yet so come home to her.

’Quench Thou the fires of heat and strife,
The wasting fever of the heart;
From perils guard our feeble life,
And to our souls Thy help impart.’

Cecily’s judgment would have been thought weakly charitable by all the rest of the family.  Mr. Adderley had been forwarded by Sir Francis Walsingham like a bale of goods, and arriving in a mood of such self-reproach as would be deemed abject, by persons used to the modern relations between noblemen and their chaplains, was exhilarated by the unlooked-for comfort of finding his young charge at least living, and in his grandfather’s house.  From his narrative, Walsingham’s letter, and Osbert’s account, Lord Walwyn saw no reason to doubt that the Black Ribaumonts had thought that massacre a favourable moment for sweeping the only survivor of the White or elder branch away, and that not only had royalty lent itself to the cruel project, but that as Diane de Ribaumont had failed as a bait, the young espoused wife had herself been employed to draw him into the snare, and secure his presence at the slaughter-house, away from his safe asylum at the Ambassador’s or even in the King’s garde-robe.  It was an unspeakably frightful view to take of the case, yet scarcely worse than the reality of many of the dealings of those with whom the poor young girl had been associated:  certainly not worse than the crimes, the suspicion of which was resting on the last dowager Queen of France; and all that could be felt by the sorrowing family, was comfort that at least corruption of mind had either not been part of the game, or had been unsuccessful, and, by all testimony, the victim was still the same innocent boy.  This was all their relief, while for days, for weeks, Berenger de Ribaumont lay in a trance or torpor between life and death.  Sometimes, as Cecily had said, his eyes turned with a startled wistfulness towards the door, and the sound of a bell seemed to thrill