"I would lose this place, and be rare thankful to do it," responded the girl addressed as Marion, who was another of the chamberers. "I oft-times wish we were as the meynie,[#] and could be hence if we would."
The expression of Jane’s face indicated that she thought such a sentiment treasonable.
"What with her Grace, and what with Tamzine, it is not a dog’s life we lead!" continued Marion. "If the thing lay in mine hands, you should see, but I would wed the first man that asked me, just to be out of it."
"So might you be worser off than now," suggested Jane.
Jane shook her head as if she thought that very questionable.
"Men be queer matter," said she. "Now you can make out a woman."
"Good lack! think you making out is all?" replied Marion. "She is easy enough to make out, is Her Grace. So is Tamzine. But I love their company never a whit the more for that. Gramercy, there goeth my Lady’s handbell! I must away."
In an upper room in the same house two other girls were sitting. One, who sat at work in the window-seat, was so like Frideswide that we can easily guess her to be Agnes Marston. She was a little quieter than her sister in manner, and a shade less good-looking.
The other girl sat in a large, handsome, curule chair, with an illuminated manuscript open on the table before her. Her face was a remarkable one. Her figure was extremely slender, thin almost to emaciation: but more striking than this was the wan white face, where two hectic spots burned in the hollow cheeks, and the large dark blue eyes seemed of unnatural size and brilliance. A long-drawn sigh made Agnes look up.
"Your Ladyship is weary, methinks," she said.
"I may well be thus," was the answer, as the head was leaned on the thin hand. "I was doing that which would weary an angel, for I was trying to understand God."
The white-faced girl lifted her head, and let her eyes meet those of Agnes.
"It were to no good to speak in riddles," she said. "Agnes, you have dwelt in this house a full year, and you know the sorrows thereof as well as I. Specially, you know my sorrows—you know that I live a life wherein there is nothing to make the present happy, and the future is all full of a great dread. There is only one in all the world that loves me, and I cannot go to him: and one that I love not, and that loves not me, is about to be forced upon me whether I will or no. Why should I try to hide these things from you? You know them all. In all the whole world that is, and in the life that is to be, there is not one ray of sunlight for me. Do you marvel, Agnes, if life looks black to mine eyes? Are you one of those surface seers, that reckon a woman should be comforted for a breaking heart by a necklace of pearl, and that she is a fool to weep for a lost friend if she have a new gown of crimson velvet?"