well?"

"I, Madam! In very sooth, should it like your Grace to take me?" And
Maude's eyes sparkled with delight.

"I cannot take thee, my child!" was the reply, spoken in a tone so grave
that it was almost sad. "If thou wouldst go, it is Another must bear
thee thither."

"The Lady Custance?" inquired Maude, glancing at her.

"The Lord Jesus Christ."

Agnes mechanically crossed herself. Maude's memory ran far back.

"Sister Christian, that was a nun at Pleshy," she observed, dreamily,
"was wont to say, long time agone, unto Mother and me, that holy Mary's
Son did love us and die for us; but I never wist nought beyond that.
Would your Grace, of your goodness, tell me wherefore it were?"

"Wherefore He died? It was in the stead of thee, my maid, if thou wilt
have it so: He died that thou mightest never die withouten end.--Or
wherefore He loved, wouldst know? Truly, I can but bid thee ask that of
Himself, for none wist that mystery save His own great heart. There was
nought in us that He should love us; but there was every cause in
Himself wherefore He should love."

Maude was silent; but the thought which she was revolving in her mind
was whether any great saint had ever asked such a question of Him who to
her was only "holy Mary's Son." Of course it would have to be asked
through Mary. No one, not even the greatest saint, considered Maude,
had ever spoken direct to Him, except in a vision. The next remark of
the Countess rather startled her.

"My maid, dost ever pray?"

"An' it like your Grace, I do say every even the Hail Mary, and every
morrow the Credo; and of Sundays and holy days likewise the
Paternoster."

"And didst never feel no want ne lack, for the which thou findest not
words in the Hail Mary ne in the Credo, if it be not an holy day?"

Ay, many a want, as Maude well knew, but what had Credo or Angelus to do
with wants? Prayer, in her eyes, meant either long repetitions imposed
as penances by the priest, or else the daily use of a charm, the
omission of which might entail evil consequences. Of prayer as a real
means of procuring something about which she cared, she had no more
notion than Dame Agnes's squirrel, at that moment running round his
cage, had of the distance and extent of Sherwood Forest. Maude looked
up in the face of her mistress with an expression of deep perplexity.

"Child," said the Countess, "when Dame Joan would send word touching
some matter unto Dame Agnes here,