a sin to be shriven for."

Clarice turned her wan face towards her mother.

"Grateful!" she said. "For what should I be thankful to her? Dame, she
has torn me away from the only one in the world that I loved, and has
forced me to wed a man whom I alike fear and hate. Do you think that
matter for thankfulness, or does she!"

"Tut, tut!" said the Dame. "Do not ruffle up thy feathers like a pigeon
that has got bread-crumbs when he looked for corn! Why, child, 'tis but
what all women have to put up with. We all have our calf-loves and bits
of maidenly fancies, but who ever thought they were to rule the roast?
Sure, Clarice, thou hast more sense than so?"

"Dame, pardon me, but you understand not. This was no light love of
mine--no passing fancy that a newer one might have put out. It was the
one hope and joy of my whole life. I had nothing else to live for."

To Clarice's horror, the rejoinder to her rhetoric was what the Dame
herself would have called "a jolly laugh."

"Dear, dear, how like all young maids be!" cried the mother. "Just the
very thought had I when my good knight my father sent away Master Pride,
and told me I must needs wed with thy father, Sir Gilbert. That is
twenty years gone this winter Clarice, and I swear to thee I thought
mine heart was broke. Look on me now. Look I like a woman that had
brake her heart o' love? I trow not, by my troth!"

No; certainly no one would have credited that rosy, comfortable matron
with having broken her heart any number of years ago.

"And thou wilt see, too, when twenty years be over, Clarice, I warrant
thee thou shalt look back and laugh at thine own folly. Deary me,
child! Folks cannot weep for ever and the day after. Wait till thou
art forty, and then see if thy trouble be as sore in thy mind then as
now."

Forty! Should she ever be forty? Clarice fondly hoped not. And would
any lapse of years change the love which seemed to her interwoven with
every fibre of her heart? That heart cried out and said, Impossible!
But Dame La Theyn heard no answer.

"When thou hast dwelt on middle earth [Note 1], child, as long as I
have, thou wilt look on things more in proportion. There be other
affairs in life than lovemaking. Women spend not all their days
thinking of wooing, and men still less. I warrant thee thy lover, whoso
he be, shall right soon comfort himself with some other damsel. Never
suspect a man of constancy, child. They know not what