when not alone with you! I know verily that he is loyal,
and that my hatred to her is more than is meet. I will--I will pray for
her, but I would that you were in your convent still, and that I could
hide me there.'

'That were scarce enough,' said Cecily. 'One sister we had who had fled
to our house to hide her sorrows for her betrothed had wedded another.
She took her sorrows for her vocation, strove to hurry on her vows, and
when they were taken, she chafed and fretted under them. It was she who
wrote to the commissioner the letter that led to the visitation of our
house, and, moreover, she was the only one of us who married.'

'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