My heart stood still, for now everything was on the fall of the dice.  Would this mad girl be mocking or meek?  Would she anger my lady to my ruin with her sharp tongue?  For Charlotte was of a high temper, and wont to rule all the house by reason of her beauty and kind wild ways.  Nor was Elliot the meekest of women, as well I knew, and a word, nay a smile, or a glance of mockery, might lightly turn her heart from me again for ever.  Oh! the lot of a lover is hard, at least if he has set all his heart on the cast, as I had done, and verily, as our Scots saw runs, “women are kittle cattle.”  It is a strange thing that one who has learned not to blench from a bare blade, or in bursting of cannon-balls and flight of arrows, should so easily be daunted where a weak girl is concerned; yet so it was in my case.  I know not if I feared more than now when Brother Thomas had me in the still chamber, alone at his mercy.

So the minutes went by, the sun and shade flickering through the boughs of the mulberry-tree, and the time seemed long.  Perchance, I thought, there had been war, as Charlotte had said, and my lady had departed in anger with her father, and I was all undone.  Yet I dared not go to seek them in the house, not knowing how matters were passing, and whether I should do good or harm.  So I waited, and at length Charlotte came forth alone.  Now she walked slowly, her eyes bent on the ground, and, as she drew near, I saw that they were red, and I guessed that she had been weeping.  So I gave up all for lost, and my heart turned to water within me.

“I am sent to bid you come in,” she said gravely.

“What has passed?” I cried.  “For the saints’ sake, tell me all!”

“This has passed, that I have seen such a lady as I never dreamed I should see, and she has made me weep—­foolish that I am!”

“Why, what did she?  Did she speak unkindly then, to my kind nurse?”

For this I could in no manner have endured, nor have abased myself to love one that was unjust, how dear soever; and none could be dearer than Elliot.  Yet unjust she might have been; and this thought to me was the greatest torment.

“Speak unkind words?  Oh, I remember my foolish talk, how I said that she would never forgive me while the world stands.  Nay, while her father was with mine and with my mother, thanking them for what they did for you, she led me apart to devise with me, and I took her to my chamber, and there, with tears in her eyes, and in the sweetest manner, she prayed me to pardon her for that she had been mad for a moment; and so, looking meek as an angel, she awaited my word.  And I could not but weep, though to weep is never my way, and we embraced each the other, and I told her how all your converse had ever been of her, even when you were beside yourself, in your fever, and how never was so faithful a lover.  Nay, I bid you be glad, for I never deemed that any woman living on earth would so repent and so confess herself to another, where she herself had first been wroth, but would blame all the world rather, and herself—­never.  So we women are not all alike, as I thought; for I would hardly have forgiven, if I know myself; and yet I am no worse than another.  Truly, she has been much with the Maid, and has caught from her this, to be like her, who is alone among women, and of the greatest heart.”