The result was only what Lord Walwyn had anticipated, but he was nevertheless shocked at the crushing weight of the blow. His heart was full of compassion for the youth so cruelly treated in these his first years of life, and as much torn in his affections as mangled in person. After a pause, while he gathered up the sense of the letters, he laid his hand kindly on his grandson's arm, and said, 'This is a woeful budget, my poor son; we will do our best to help you to bear it.'
'The only way to bear it,' said Berenger, lifting up his face, 'is for me to take horse and make for Anjou instantly. She will hold out bravely, and I may yet save her.'
'Madness,' said his grandfather; 'you have then not read your fellow's letter?'
'I read no letter from fellow of mine. Yonder is a vile forgery. Narcisse's own, most likely. No one else would have so profaned her as to put such words into her mouth! My dear faithful foster-brother-have they murdered him?'
'Can you point to any proof that it is forged?' said Lord Walwyn, aware that handwriting was too difficult an art, and far too crabbed, among persons of Osbert's class, for there to be any individuality of penmanship.
'It is all forged,' said Berenger. 'It is as false that she could frame such a message as that poor Osbert would leave me.'
'These priests have much power over the conscience,' began Lord Walwyn; but Berenger, interrupting his grandfather for the first time in his life, cried, 'No priest could change her whole nature. Oh! my wife! my darling! what may they not be inflicting on her now! Sir, I must go. She may be saved! The deadly sin may be prevented!'
'This is mere raving, Berenger,' said Lord Walwyn, not catching half what he said, and understanding little more than his resolution to hasten in quest of the lady. 'You, who have not mounted a horse, nor walked across the pleasance yet!'
'My limbs should serve me to rescue her, or they are worth nothing to me.'
Lord Walwyn would have argued that he need not regret his incapacity to move, since it was no doubt already too late, but Berenger burst forth-'She will resist; she will resist to the utmost, even if she deems me dead. Tortures will not shake her when she knows I live. I must prepare.' And he started to his feet.
'Grandson,' said Lord Walwyn, laying a hand on his arm, 'listen to me. You are in not state to judge for yourself. I therefore command you to desist from this mad purpose.'
He spoke gravely, but Berenger was disobedient for the first time.
'My Lord,' he said, 'you are but my grandfather. She is my wife. My duty is to her.'
He had plucked his sleeve away and was gone, before Lord Walwyn had been able to reason with him that there was no wife in the case, a conclusion at which the old statesman would not have arrived had he known of the ceremony at Montpipeau, and all that had there passed; but not only did Berenger deem himself bound to respect the King's secret, but conversation was so difficult to him that he had told very little of his adventures, and less to Lord Walwyn than any one else. In effect, his grandfather considered this resolution of going to France as mere frenzy, and so it almost was, not only on the score of health and danger, but because as a ward, he was still so entirely under subjection, that his journey could have been hindered by absolutely forcible detention; and to this Lord Walwyn intended to resort, unless the poor youth either came to a more rational mind, or became absolutely unable to travel.
The last-as he had apprehended-came to pass only too surely. The very attempt to argue and to defend Eustacie was too much for the injured head; and long before night Berenger full believed himself on the journey, acted over its incidents, and struggled wildly with difficulties, all the time lying on his bed, with the old servants holding him down, and Cecily listening tearfully to his ravings.
For weeks longer he was to lie there in greater danger than ever. He only seemed soothed into quiet when Cecily chanted those old Latin hymns of her Benedictine rule, and then-when he could speak at all-he showed himself to be in imagination praying in Eustacie's convent chapel, sure to speak to her when the service should be over.
CHAPTER XV. NOTRE-DAME DE BELLAISE*
There came a man by middle day,
He spied his sport and went away,
And brought the king that very night,
And brake my bower and slew my knight.
The Border Widow's Lament
*[footnote: Bellaise is not meant for a type of all nunneries, but of the condition to which many of the lesser ones had come before the general reaction and purification of the seventeenth century.]
That same Latin hymn which Cecily St. John daily chanted in her own chamber was due from the choir of Cistercian sisters in the chapel of the Convent of Our Lady at Bellaise, in the Bocage of Anjou; but there was a convenient practice of lumping together the entire night and forenoon hours at nine o'clock in the morning, and all the evening ones at Compline, so that the sisters might have undisturbed sleep at night and entertainment by day. Bellaise was a very comfortable little nunnery, which only received richly dowered inmates, and was therefore able to maintain them in much ease, though without giving occasion to a breath of scandal. Founded by a daughter of the first Angevin Ribaumont, it had become a sort of appendage for the superfluous daughters of the house, and nothing would more have amazed its present head, Eustacie Barbe de Ribaumont,-conventually known as La Mere Marie Seraphine de St.-Louis, and to the world as Madame de Bellaise,-than to be accused of not fulfilling the intentions of the Bienheureuse Barbe, the foundress, or of her patron St. Bernard.
Madame de Bellaise was a fine-looking woman of forty, in a high state of preservation, owing to the healthy life she had led. Her eyes were of brilliant, beautiful black her complexion had a glow, her hair-for she wore it visibly- formed crisp rolls of jetty ringlets on her temples, almost hiding her close white cap. The heavy thick veil was tucked back beneath the furred purple silk hood that fastened under her chin. The white robes of her order were not of serge, but of the finest cloth, and were almost hidden by a short purple cloak with sleeves, likewise lined and edged with fur, and fastened on the bosom with a gold brooch. Her fingers, bearing more rings than the signet of her house, were concealed in embroidered gauntlets of Spanish leather. One of them held an ivory-handled riding- rod, the other the reins of the well-fed jennet, on which the lady, on a fine afternoon, late in the Carnival, was cantering home through the lanes of the Bocage, after a successful morning's hawking among the wheat-ears. She was attended by a pair of sisters, arrayed somewhat in the same style, and by a pair of mounted grooms, the falconer with his charge having gone home by a footway.
The sound of horses' feet approaching made her look towards a long lane that came down at right angles to that along which she was riding, and slacken her pace before coming to its opening. And as she arrived at the intersection, she beheld advancing, mounted on a little rough pony, the spare figure of her brother the Chevalier, in his home suit, so greasy and frayed, that only his plumed hat (and a rusty plume it was) and the old sword at his side showed his high degree.
He waved his hand to her as a sign to halt, and rode quickly up, scarcely giving time for a greeting ere he said, 'Sister the little one is not out with you.'
'No, truly, the little mad thing, she is stricter and more head-strong than ever was her preceptress. Poor Monique! I had hoped that we should be at rest when that
'Assuredly not. The business must be concluded at once. She must be married before Lent.'
'That will scarce be-in her present frame.'
'It must be. Listen, sister. Here is this miserable alive!'
'Her spouse!'
'Folly about her spouse! The decree from Rome has annulled the foolish mummery of her infancy. It came a week after the Protestant conspiracy, and was registered when the Norman peasants at Chateau Leurre showed contumacy. It was well; for, behold, our gallant is among his English friends, recovering, and even writing a billet. Anon he will be upon our hands in person. By the best fortune, Gillot fell in with his messenger this morning, prowling about on his way to the convent, and brought him to me to be examined. I laid him fat in ward, and sent Gillot off to ride day and night to bring my son down to secure the girl at once.'
'You will never obtain her consent. She is distractedly in love with his memory! Let her guess at his life,
