st time the full sense of what
life might be, the shielding tenderness, the sure reliance, the pure
affection, such as she saw Henry lavish on the shallow Queen, but which
she could meet and requite in John. The brutal Boemond, the childish
Malcolm, had aroused no feeling in her but dislike or pity, and to them a
convent was infinitely preferable; but Bedford--the religious, manly,
brave, unselfish Bedford--opened to her the view of all that could
content a high-souled woman's heart, backed, moreover, by the wonder of
having been the first to touch such a spirit.

It would not have been a _mesalliance_. Her family was one of the
grandest of the Netherlands; the saintly Emperor, Henry of Luxemburg, was
her ancestor; and Bedford's proposal was not a condescension such as to
rouse her sense of dignity. His rank did not strike her as did his lofty
stainless character; the like of which she had never known to exist in
the world of active life till she saw the brothers of England, who came
more near to the armed saints and holy warriors of Church legend than her
fancy had thought mortal man could do, bred as she had been in the
sensual, violent, and glittering Burgundy of the fifteenth century. In
truth, as Malcolm had thought the cloister the only refuge from the
harshness and barbarism of Scotland, so Esclairmonde had thought piety
and purity to be found nowhere else; and both had found the Court of
Henry V. an infinitely better world than they had supposed possible; but,
until the present moment, Esclairmonde had never felt the slightest call
to take a permanent place there. Now however the cloister, even if it
were open to her, presented a gloomy, cheerless life of austerity, in
comparison with human affection and matronly duty. And most vivid of all
at the moment was the desire to awaken the tender sweetness that slept in
those steady gray eyes, to see the grave, wise visage gleam with smiling
affection, and to rest in having one to take thought for her, and finish
this long term of tossing about and self-defence. Was not the patience
with which he kept his eyes away from her already a proof of his
consideration and delicate kindness?

But deep in Esclairmonde's soul lay the sense that her dedication was
sacred, and her power over herself gone. She had always felt a wife's
allegiance due to Him whom she received as her spiritual Spouse; and
though the sense at this moment only brought her disappointment and self-