ling, turning round.]

Maude shook her head, as if to say that she could not tell. She had
resumed her work, the hemming of what she (not very elegantly) called
a sudary, and we, euphemistically but tautologically, a
pocket-handkerchief.

"Ah! 'tis a blessed thing to have a brother!" observed Bertram with
irony. "Well!--and what news, sweet Hugh, of olden friends?"

"None overmuch," responded Hugh, "unless it be of the death of Father
Wilfred, of the Priory at Langley."

"Ah me!" exclaimed Bertram regretfully.

"Master Calverley," said Maude, looking up, "do me to wit, of your
goodness, if you wot any thing touching the Lady Avice de Narbonne?"

"But so much," answered he, "that she hath taken veil upon herself in
the Minoresses' convent at Aldgate, and is, I do hear, accounted of the
sisters a right holy and devout woman."

"Marry, I am well fain to hear so good news," said Maude.

"Good news, Mistress Maude! forsooth, were I lover or kinsman of the
fair lady, I would account them right evil news," commented Bertram, in
a tone of some surprise.

"Methinks I conceive what Mistress Maude signifieth," quietly observed
Hugh. "She accounteth that the Lady Avice shall find help and comfort
in the Minoresses' house."

"Ay, in very deed," said Maude, "the which methinks she could never have
found without."

"God have it so!" answered Hugh, gently. "Yet I trust, Mistress Maude,
that our Lord may be found without convent cell, as lightly [easily] as
within it."

"Be these all thy news, sweet Hugh?" inquired Bertram. "Is nought at
work in the outer world?"

"Matters be reasonable peaceful at this present. But methinks King
Henry sitteth not over delightsomely on his throne, seeing he hath
captivated [captured] the four childre of my sometime Lord of March, and
shut them close in the Castle of Windsor."

"Hath he so?" asked Bertram, with interest. "Poor hearts!"

"Be they small childre?" said Maude, compassionately.

"The Lady Anne, that is eldest, hath but nine years, I do hear."

"Ay me, Master Calverley! Have they any mother?"

"Trust me, ay!" broke in Bertram. "Why, have you forgot that my Lady of
March is sister unto the Duchess' Grace of York?"

"And is she prisoned with the childre?"

"Holy Mary! the King's Grace lacketh not her," said Bertram.

"She was dancing at the Court a few weeks gone," returned Hugh rather
drily, "with her servant [lover], the Baron of Powys, a-waiting upon
her; a