She could tell her beads, I suppose; but would she know what they
meant?"

For Bertha, like everybody else at that time, thought it necessary to
keep count of her prayers. Prayer, in her eyes, was not so much
communion with God, as it was a kind of charm which in some
unaccountable way brought you good luck.

"Beads would have meant nothing to her but toys," was Avice's reply.
"The Lady de la Mothe taught her the holy sign"--by which Avice meant
the cross--"and led her to the image of blessed Mary, that she might do
it before her. But I do not think she ever properly understood that She
seemed only to have an idea that it was something she must do when she
saw an image; and she did it to the statue of the Lady Queen in the
great hall. We could not make her understand that one image was not the
same thing as another image. But I fancy she had some idea--strange and
dim it might be--of what we meant when we knelt and put our hands
together and looked up. I know she did it very often, without telling--
always at night, before she slept. But it was strange that she never
went to the holy images at that time; she always seemed to go away from
them, and kneel down in a corner. And in her last illness, several
times, coming into the chamber, I found her lying with her hands folded
in prayer, and her eyes lifted up to Heaven. Perhaps God Himself told
her how to speak to Him. One of the strangest things of all was when
the little Lord William died; she was nearly three years old then. She
had been very fond of her little brother; he was nearest her age of all
her brothers and sisters, though he was almost four years older than
herself. She came to me sobbing bitterly, and with her little cry of
`Who? who?' I took it to mean `What has happened to him?' and I was
completely puzzled how to explain it to her. But all at once, while I
was beating my brains to think what I could say that would make her
comprehend it, she told me herself what I could not tell her. Making
the sign for the little Lord who was dead, she laid her head upon her
hand, and closed her eyes; and then all at once, with a peculiar grace
that I never saw in any child but herself, she lifted her arms,
fluttering her fingers like a bird flaps its wings, and gazing up into
the sky, while she said, `Up! up!' in a kind of rapture. And I could
only smile and bow my head to the truth which God had told her." [See
Note 1.]

"But how could she know it?