y it himself, he leaves the task to Margery.
And as for that letter; a Lenten jest I called it yestereve; and so it is
verily! Read it once more. Why, it is as dripping with love as a garment
drips when it is fished out of a pool! While he is trying to shut the
door on you he clasps you to his heart. Peradventure his love never
glowed so hotly, and he was never so strongly drawn to you as when he
wrote this paltry stuff to burst the sacred bands which bind you
together. Are you so dull as not to feel this?"

"Nay, I see it right well," cried Ann eagerly, "I knew it when I first
read the letter. But that is the very point! Must not a lover who can
barter away his love for filthy lucre be base indeed? If when he ceased
to be true he had likewise ceased to love, if the fickle Fortunatus had
wearied of his sweetheart--then I could far more easily forgive."

"And do you tell me that your heart ever throbbed with true love for
him?" asked her friend in amazement, and looking keenly into her eyes as
though she expected her to say No. And when Ann cried: "How can you even
ask such a question?" My aunt went on: "Then you did love him? And
Margery tells me that you and she have made some strange compact to make
other folks happy. Two young maids who dare to think they can play at
being God Almighty! And the Magister, I conceive, was to be the first to
whom you proposed to be a willing sacrifice, let it cost you what it may?
That is how matters stand?"

Ann was not now so ready to nod assent, and my aunt murmured something I
could not hear, as she was wont to do when something rubbed her against
the grain; then she said with emphasis: "But child, my poor child, love,
and wounded pride, and heart-ache have turned your heart and good sense.
I am an old woman, and I thank God can see more clearly. It is real, true
love, pleasing to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, aye and to the
merciful Virgin and all the saints who protect you, which has bound you
and Herdegen together from your infancy. He, though faithless and a
sinner, still bears his love in his heart and you have not been able to
root yours up and cast it out. He has done his worst, and in doing
it--remember his letter--in doing it, I say, has poisoned his own young
life already. In that Babel called Paris he does but reel from one
pleasure to another. But how long can that last? Do you not see, as I
see, that the day must come when, sickened and loathing all this folly he
w