Edward. Whither, then, is she to go for whom there is no room on middle
earth [Note 2], and whose company all men avoid? Nay, my maid, for the
Lady Marguerite there is no home save Heaven; and there is none to be
glad of her company save Him that was yet more lonely than she, and
whose foes, like hers, were they of His own house."

"'Tis sore pitiful!" said Amphillis, looking up with the tears in her
eyes.

"`Pitiful'! ay, never was sadder case sithence that saddest of all in
the Garden of Gethsemane. Would God she would seek Him, and accept of
His pity!"

"Surely, our Lady is Christian woman!" responded Amphillis, in a rather
astonished tone.

"What signifiest thereby?"

"Why she that doth right heartily believe Christ our Lord to have been
born and died, and risen again, and so forth."

"What good should that do her?"

Amphillis stared, without answering.

"If that belief were very heartfelt, it should be life and comfort; but
meseemeth thy manner of belief is not heartfelt, but headful. To
believe that a man lived and died, Phyllis, is not to accept his help,
and to affy thee in his trustworthiness. Did it ever any good and
pleasure to thee to believe that one Julius Caesar lived over a thousand
years ago?"

"No, verily; but--" Amphillis did not like to say what she was thinking,
that no appropriation of good, nor sensation of pleasure, had ever yet
mingled with that belief in the facts concerning Jesus Christ on which
she vaguely relied for salvation. She thought a moment, and then spoke
out. "Mistress, did you mean there was some other fashion of believing
than to think certainly that our Lord did live and die?"

"Set in case, Phyllis, that thou shouldst hear man to say, `I believe in
Master Godfrey, but not in Master Matthew,' what shouldst reckon him to
signify? Think on it."

"I suppose," said Amphillis, after a moment's pause for consideration,
"I should account him to mean that he held Master Godfrey for a true
man, in whom man might safely affy him; but that he felt not thus sure
of Master Matthew."

"Thou wouldst not reckon, then, that he counted Master Matthew as a
fabled man that was not alive?"

"Nay, surely!" said Amphillis, laughing.

"Then seest not for thyself that there is a manner of belief far beside
and beyond the mere reckoning that man liveth? Phyllis, dost thou trust
Christ our Lord?"

"For what, Mistress? That He shall make me safe at last, if I do my
duty, and p