m but me," made she answer, and her voice grew very
troubled. "Not even _Aubrey_, nor _Lettice_. _Bess_ guessed at him
after awhile, but not till she had seen him divers times. But for me
one glimpse was enough."

Aunt _Joyce's_ work was still now.

"Hadst thou surmised aforetime that it were he?"

Aunt _Joyce_ shook her head.

"No need for surmising, _Dulcie_," she said. "If I were laid in my
grave for a year and a day, I should know his step upon the mould above
me."

"My poor _Joyce_!" softly quoth my Lady _Stafford_. "Even God hath no
stronger word than `passing the love of women.' Yet a woman's love
lasts not out to that in most cases."

"Her heart lasts not out, thou meanest," saith Aunt _Joyce_. "Hearts
are weak, _Dulcie_, but love is immortal."

"And hast thou still hope--for him, _Joyce_?" answereth my Lady. "I
lost the last atom of mine, years gone."

"Hope of his ultimate salvation? Ay--as long as life lasts. I shall
give over hoping for it when I see it."

"But," saith my Lady slowly, as though she scarce liked to say the same,
"how if thou never wert to see it?"

"`Between the stirrup and the ground,
Mercy I sought, mercy I found.'

"Thou wist that epitaph, _Dulcie_, on him that lost life by a fall from
the saddle. My seeing it were comfort, but no necessity. I could go on
hoping that God had seen it."

Aunt _Joyce_ arose and left the chamber. Then saith my Lady _Stafford_
to me--

"There goes a strong soul. There be women such as she: but they are not
to be picked, like blackberries, off every bramble. _Edith_, young
folks are apt to think love a mere matter of youth and of matrimony.
They cannot make a deeper blunder. The longer love lasts, the stronger
it groweth."

"Always, my Lady?" said I.

"Ay," saith she. "That is, if it be love."

We wrought a while without more talk: when suddenly saith my Lady
_Stafford_:--

"_Edith_, didst thou see this _Tregarvon_, or how he called himself?"

"Ay, Madam," said I. "He made up to me one morrow, when my sister
_Milisent_ and I were on Saint _Hubert's_ Isle in the mere yonder, and I
was sat, a-drawing, of a stone."

"Ay so?" quoth she, with some earnestness in her voice. "And what
then?"

"I think he took not much of me, Madam," said I.

My Lady _Stafford_ smiled, yet methought somewhat pensively.

"May I wit what he said to thee, _Edith_?"

"Oh, a parcel of stuff touching mine hair and mine eyes, and the like,