He pays compensation for
such wrongs as mine? Must I never see my little child again, the baby
lad that clung to me and would not see me weep? My pillow is wet now,
and no man careth for it--nay, nor God Himself. I was alway true woman;
I never wronged human soul, that I know. I paid my dues, and shrived me
clean, and lived honestly. Wherefore is all this come upon me?"

"Lady Marguerite, if you lost a penny and gained a gold noble, would you
think you were repaid the loss or no?"

"In very deed I should," the sick woman replied, languidly; the fire had
spent itself in that outburst, and the embers had little warmth left in
them.

"Yet," said the Archbishop, significantly, "you would not have won the
lost thing back."

"What matter, so I had its better?"

"We will return to that. But first I have another thing to ask. You
say you never wronged man to your knowledge. Have you always paid all
your dues to Him that is above men?"

"I never robbed the Church of a penny!"

"There be other debts than pence, my daughter. Have you kept, to the
best of your power, all the commandments of God?"

"In very deed I have."

"You never worshipped any other God?"

"I never worshipped neither Jupiter nor Juno, nor Venus, nor Diana, nor
Mars, nor Mercury."

"That can I full readily believe. But as there be other debts than
money, so there be other gods than Jupiter. Honoured you no man nor
thing above God? Cared you alway more for His glory than for the fame
of Marguerite of Flanders, or the comfort of Jean de Bretagne?"

"Marry, you come close!" said the Countess, with a laugh. "Fame and
ease be not gods, good Father."

"They be not God," was the significant answer. "`Ye are servants to him
whom ye obey,' saith the apostle, and man may obey other than his lawful
master. Whatsoever you set, or suffer to set himself, in God's place,
that is your god. What has been your god, my daughter?"

"I am never a bit worse than my neighbours," said the Countess, leaving
that inconvenient question without answer, and repairing, as thousands
do, to that very much broken cistern of equality in transgression.

"You must be better than your neighbours ere God shall suffer you in His
holy Heaven. You must be as good as He is, or you shall not win
thither. And since man cannot be so, the only refuge for him is to take
shelter under the cross of Christ, which wrought righteousness to cover
him."

"Then man may live as