This was rather an exaggeration, but joy did make a good deal of difference in Grisell’s face, and the Duchess Margaret was one of the most eager and warm-hearted people living, fervent alike in love and in hate, ready both to act on slight evidence for those whose cause she took up, and to nourish bitter hatred against the enemies of her house.
“Now, tell me all,” she continued in English. “I heard that you had been driven out of Wilton, and my uncle of Warwick had sped you northward. How is it that you are here, weaving lace like any mechanical sempstress? Nay, nay! I cannot listen to you on your knees. We have hugged one another too often for that.”
Grisell, with the elder Duchess’s permission, seated herself on the cushion at Margaret’s feet. “Speak English,” continued the bride. “I am wearying already of French! Ma belle mère, you will not find fault. You know a little of our own honest tongue.”
Duchess Isabel smiled, and Grisell, in answer to the questions of Margaret, told her story. When she came to the mention of her marriage to Leonard Copeland, there was the vindictive exclamation, “Bound to that blood-thirsty traitor! Never! After the way he treated you, no marvel that he fell on my sweet Edmund!”
“Ah! madame, he did not! He tried to save him.”
“Truly, madame! He had ever loved Lord Edmund. He strove to stay Lord Clifford’s hand, and threw himself between, but Clifford dashed him aside, and he bears still the scar where he fell against the parapet of the bridge. Harry Featherstone told me, when he fled from the piteous field, where died my father and brother Robin.”
“Your brother, Robin Dacre! I remember him. I would have made him good cheer for your sake, but my mother was ever strict, and rapped our fingers, nay, treated us to the rod, if we ever spake to any of my father’s meiné. Tell on, Grisell,” as her hand found its way under the hood, and stroked the fair hair. “Poor lonely one!”
Her indignation was great when she heard of Copeland’s love, and still more of his mission to seize Whitburn, saying, truly enough, that he should have taken both lady and Tower, or given both up, and lending a most unwilling ear to the plea that he had never thought his relations to Grisell binding. She had never loved Lady Heringham, and it was plainly with good cause.