Not on any account to let himself be drawn into a quarrel with Etienne.

“Thy father would feel as I do, dear son, were he in our place.  Dost thou not see that we poor English only hold our own by sufferance, and that any pretext upon which they could seize would be used ruthlessly against us?  Yes, thy death might be the result of any ill-timed quarrel, and thou mightest leave thy mother alone.  Nay, dear, dear son, at least while thy mother lives.”

“Oh, how can I?”

“Bear as a Christian, then, if thou canst not as an Englishman.  The time will not be long that I shall live to implore thee.”

“Nay, dear mother, surely thou art not ailing.”

“Sick unto death, Wilfred, I fear; nay, but for thee I should say, I hope; for shall I not then rejoin thy dear father in a land where war and violence are unknown?  But for thy sake, dear son, I would fain live.”

Poor Wilfred was sobbing by her side, overcome by the blank vision thus opening before him.  What would the world be to him, left alone amidst fierce and hateful foreigners, who had slain his father, and would willingly slay him?

“Mother, I cannot live without you.  If you die—­” and he could say no more, for it shamed his manhood to weep, as he would have said, “like a girl.”

Poor lad, we must excuse him.

“Now, my dear Wilfred, wilt thou not renew thy promise, and pray God for help to keep it?”

“Yes, by God’s help, at least while you live; but dost thou think thou art so ill, dear mother?—­it is but fancy.”

“Nay, I feel I am daily, hourly, drawing nearer my end, as if the lamp of life were burning more and more dimly.  Morning after morning I rise weaker from my bed, and mortal strength seems slowly and surely forsaking me.  But it will be but a short parting; thou must pray that we may live for ever together.  God will grant it for His dear Son’s sake.”

And the mother and son knelt down to pray.

It was too true, the English lady of Aescendune was slowly declining—­passing away, drawing nearer daily to the bright land where her lost Edmund had gone before.

It was a complaint which no one understood, although a Jewish physician, whom her husband in his anxiety consulted, prescribed a medicine which he said would ensure her recovery in a few weeks.  This medicine the baron—­for to such rank had Hugo de Malville been raised, on his accession to the lands of Aescendune—­this medicine he would always administer with his own hand.  Sometimes Wilfred was standing by, and noticed that, dropped in water, it diffused at first a sapphire hue, but that upon exposure to the air, that of the ruby succeeded.

Oh, those days of anxiety and grief—­those days when the loved patient was so manifestly loosing her hold upon life, although sometimes there would come a tantalising change for the better, and bring back hopes never to be realised.