While the elders talked, a horseman was heard in the court, asking whether the young demoiselle of Bletso were lodged there.  It was the seneschal Wenlock, who had come with what might be called the official report of his lord’s death, and to consider of the disposal of the young lady, being glad to find the Prioress of Greystone, to whom she had originally been committed by her father.

Before summoning her, he explained to the Prioress that a small estate which had belonged to her mother devolved upon her.  The proceeds of the property were not large, but they had been sufficient to keep her at the convent, on the moderate charges of the time.  Anne was only eighteen, and at no time of their lives were women, even widows, reckoned able to dispose of themselves.  She would naturally become a ward of the Crown, and Lord Redgrave having been killed, the seneschal was about to go and inform King Edward of the situation.

‘But,’ said the Prioress, ’suppose you found her already betrothed to a gentleman of equal birth, and with claims to an even greater inheritance?  Would you not be silent till the match was concluded, and the King had no chance of breaking it?’

‘If it were well for the maid’s honour and fortune,’ said the seneschal.  ’If you, reverend Mother, have found a fair marriage for her, it might be better to let well alone.’

Then the Prioress set forth the situation and claims of young Clifford, and the certainty, that even if it were more prudent not to advance them at present, yet the ruin of the house of Nevil removed one great barrier, and at least the Vesci inheritance held by his mother must come to him, and she was the more likely to make a portion over to him when she found that he had married nobly.

The seneschal acquiesced, even though the Prioress confessed that the betrothal had not actually taken place.  In fact he was relieved that the maiden, whom he had known as a fair child, should be off his hands, and secured from the greed of some Yorkist partisan needing a reward.

When Anne, her dark eyes and hair shaded by her mourning veil, came down, and had heard his greeting, with such details of her father’s death and the state of the family as he could give her, she rose and said:  ’Sir, there have been passages between Sir Harry Clifford and myself, and I would wed none other than him.’

Nor did the seneschal gainsay her.

All that he desired was that what was decided upon should be done quickly, before heralds or lawyers brought to the knowledge of the Woodvilles that there was any sort of prize to be had in the damsel of St. John, and he went off, early the next morning, back to Bletso, that he might seem to know nothing of the matter.