LADY SYBIL'S CHOICE (continued 3)

Art thou sore distressed?

'Come to Me,' saith One, 'and, coming,

Be at rest.'

"'Hath He marks to lead me to Him,

If He be my Guide?'

'In His feet and hands are wound-prints,

And His side.'

"'Is there diadem, as monarch,

That His brow adorns?'

'Yea, a crown, in very surety,

But of thorns.'

"If I find Him, if I follow,

What His guerdon here?'

'Many a sorrow, many a labour,

Many a tear.'

"'If I still hold closely to Him,

What hath He at last?'

'Sorrow vanquished, labour ended,

Jordan past.'

"'If I ask Him to receive me,

Will He say me nay?'

'Not till earth, and not till heaven,

Pass away.'"

"Oh! Your pardon, holy Mother, for interrupting you," said Damoiselle Melisende, coming in some haste; "but the Lady Queen sent me to ask when the Lady Sybil's tunic will be finished."

Her leaves are finished, but not my roses, nor Lady Judith's gold diapering. I felt much obliged to her, for something in the hymn had so touched me that the tears were very near my eyes again. Lady Judith answered that she thought it would be done to-morrow; and Melisende ran off again.

"Hast thou heard that hymn before, Helena?" said Lady Judith, busy with the diaper.

"Never, holy Mother," said I, as well as I could.

"Did it please thee now?"

"It brought the tears into my eyes," said I, not sorry for the excuse.

"They had not far to come, had they, little one?"

I looked up, and met her soft grey eyes. And—it was very silly of me, but—I burst into tears once more.

"It is always best to have a fit of weeping out," said she. "Thou wilt feel better for it, my child."

"But I had—had it out—once," sobbed I.

"Ah, not quite," answered Lady Judith. "There was more to come, little one."

"It seems so foolish," I said, wiping my eyes at last. "I do not exactly know why I was crying."

"Those tears are often bitter ones," said Lady Judith. "For sometimes it means that we dare not look and see why."

I thought that was rather my position. For indeed the bitter ingredient in my pain at that moment was one which I did not like to put into words, even to myself.

It was not that Guy did not love me. Oh no! I knew he did. It was not even that I did not stand first in his love. I was ready to yield that place to Lady Sybil. Perhaps I should not have been quite so ready had it been to any one else. But—there was the sting—he did not love me as I loved him. He could do without me.

And I could have no comfort from sympathy. Because, in the first place, the only person whose sympathy would have been a comfort to me was the very one who had distressed me; and in the second place, I had a vague idea underlying my grief that I had no business to feel any; that every body (if they knew) would tell me I was exceedingly silly—that it was only what I ought to have expected—and all sorts of uncomfortable consolations of that kind. Was I a foolish baby, crying for the moon?—or was I a grand heroine of romance, whose feelings were so exquisitely delicate and sensitive that the common clay of which other people were made could not be expected to understand me? I could not tell.

Oh, why must we come out of that sweet old world where we walked hand in hand, and were all in all to each other? Why must we grow up, and drift asunder, and never be the same to one another any more?

Was I wicked?—or was I only miserable?

About the last item at any rate there was no doubt. I sat, thinking sad thoughts, and trying to see my work through half-dimmed eyes, when Lady Judith spoke again.

"Helena," she said, "grief has two voices; and many only hear the upper and louder one. I shall be sorry to see thee miss that lower, stiller voice, which is by far the more important of the two."

"What do you mean, holy Mother?" I asked.

"Dear heart," she said, "the louder voice, which all must hear, chants in a minor key, 'This world is not your rest.' It is a sad, sad song, more especially to those who have heard little of it before. But many miss the soft, sweet music of the undertone, which is,—'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.' Yet it is always there—if we will only listen."

"But a thing which is done cannot be undone," said I.

"No," she answered. "It cannot. But can it not be compensated? If thou lose a necklace of gilt copper, and one give thee a gold carcanet instead, hast thou really sustained any loss?"

"Yes!" I answered, almost astonished at my own boldness. "If the copper carcanet were a love-gift from the dead, what gold could make up to me for that?"

"Ah, my child!" she replied, with a quick change in her tone. It was almost as if she had said,—"I did not understand thee to mean that!"—"For those losses of the heart there is but one remedy. But there is one."

"Costly and far-fetched, methinks!" said I, sighing.

"Costly, ay, in truth," she replied; "but far-fetched? No. It is close to thee, if thou wilt but stretch forth thine hand and grasp it."

"What, holy Mother?"

Her voice sank to a low and very reverent tone.

"'Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.'"

"I cannot!" I sobbed.

"No, thou couldst not," she said quietly, "until thou lovest the will of Him that died for thee, better than thou lovest the will of Hélène de Lusignan."

"O holy Mother!" I cried. "I could not set up my will against the good God!"

"Couldst thou not?" was all she said.

"Have I done that?" I faltered.

"Ask thine own conscience," replied Lady Judith. "Dear child, He loved not His will when He came down from Heaven, to do the will of God His Father. That will was to save His Church. Little Helena, was it to save thee?"

"How can I know, holy Mother?"

"It is worth knowing," she said.

"Yes, it is worth knowing," said I, "but how can we know?"

"What wouldst thou give to know it? Not that it can be bought: but what is it worth in thine eyes?"

I thought, and thought, but I could not tell wherewith to measure any thing so intangible.

"Wouldst thou give up having thine own will for one year?" she asked.

"I know not what might happen in it," said I, with a rather frightened feeling.

Why, I might marry, or be ill, or die. Or Guy might give over loving me altogether, in that year. Oh, I could not, could not will that! And a year is such a long, long time. No, I could not—for such a time as that—let myself slip into nothing, as it were.

"Helena," she said, "suppose, at this moment, God were to send an angel down to thee from Heaven. Suppose he brought to thee a message from God Himself, that if thou wouldst be content to leave all things to His ordering for one year, and to have no will at all in the matter, He would see that nothing was done which should really harm thee in the least. What wouldst thou say?"

"Oh, then I should dare to leave it!" said I.

"My child, if thou art of His redeemed, He has said it—not for one short year, but for all thy life. If, Helena!"

"Ah,—if!" I said with a sigh.

Lady Judith wrought at her gold diapering, and I at my roses, and we were both silent for a season. Then the Lady Queen and the Lady Isabel came in, and there was no further opportunity for quiet conversation.

CHAPTER VII.

A LITTLE CLOUD OUT OF THE SEA.

"Coming events cast their shadows before."

—CAMPBELL.

It is Monday night, and I am,—Oh, so tired!

The three grand weddings are over. Very beautiful sights they were; and very pleasant the feasts and the dances; but all is done now, and if Messire Renaud feels any doubt to-night about his body being himself, I have none about mine.

Eschine made a capital bride, in the sense in which a man would use the words. That is, she looked very nice, and she stood like a statue. I do not believe she had an idea in her head beyond these: that she was going to be married, that it was a very delightful thing, and that she must look well and behave becomingly.

Is that the sort of woman that men like? It is the sort that some men seem to think all women are.

But Amaury! If ever I did see a creature more absurd than he, I do not know who it was. He fidgetted over Eschine's bridal dress precisely as if he had been her milliner. At the very last minute, the garland had to be altered because it did not suit him.

Most charming of all the weddings was Guy's. Dear Lady Sybil was so beautiful, and behaved so perfectly, as I should judge of a bride's behaviour,—a little soft moisture dimming her dark eyes, and a little gentle tremulousness in her sweet lips. Her dress was simply enchanting,—soft and white.

Perhaps Lady Isabel made the most splendid-looking bride of the three; for her dress was gorgeous, and while Lady Sybil's style of beauty is by far the more artistic and poetical, Lady Isabel's is certainly the more showy.

So far as I could judge, the three brides regarded their bridegrooms with very different eyes. To Eschine, he was an accident of the rite; a portion of the ceremony which it would spoil the show to leave out. To Lady Isabel, he was a new horse, just mounted, interesting to try, and a pleasant triumph to subdue. But to Lady Sybil, he was the sun and centre of all, and every thing deserved attention just in proportion as it concerned him.

I almost hope that Eschine does not love Amaury, for I feel sure she will be very unhappy if she do. As to Messire Homfroy de Tours, I do not think Lady Isabel will find him a pleasant charger. He is any thing but spirited, and seems to me to have a little of the mule about him—a creature who would be given at times to taking the bit in his teeth, and absolutely refusing to go a yard further.

And now it is all over,—the pageants, and the feasts, and the dancing. And I cannot tell why I am sad.

How is it, or why is it, that after one has enjoyed any thing very much, one always does feel sad?

I think, except to the bride and bridegroom, a wedding is a very sorrowful thing. I suppose Guy would say that was one of my queer notions. But it looks to me so terribly like a funeral. There is a bustle, and a show; and then you wake up, and miss one out of your life. It is true, the one can come back still: but does he come back to be yours any more? I think the instances must be very, very few in which it is so, and only where both are, to you, very near and dear.

I think Marguerite saw I looked tired and sad.

"There have been light hearts to-day," she said; "and there have been heavy ones. But the light of to-day may be the heavy of to-morrow; and the sorrow of to-night may turn to joy in the morning."

"I do feel sorrowful, Margot; but I do not know why."

"My Damoiselle is weary. And all great joy brings a dull, tired feeling after it. I suppose it is the infirmity of earth. The angels do not feel so."

"I should like to be an angel," said I. "It must be so nice to fly!"

"And I," said Marguerite; "but not for that reason. I should like to have no sin, and to see the good God."

"Oh dear!" said I. "That is just what I should not like. In the sense of never doing wrong, it might be all very well: but I should not want never to have any amusement, which I suppose thou meanest: and seeing the good God would frighten me dreadfully."

"Does my Damoiselle remember the time when little Jacquot, Bertrade's brother, set fire to the hay-rick by playing with lighted straws?"

"Oh yes, very well. Why, what has that to do with it?"

"Does she recollect how he shrieked and struggled, when Robert and Pierre took him and carried him into the hall, for Monseigneur himself to judge him for his naughtiness?"

"Oh yes, Margot. I really felt sorry for the child, he was so terrified; and yet it was half ludicrous—Monseigneur did not even have him whipped."

"Yet, if I remember rightly, my Damoiselle was standing by Monseigneur's side at the very time; and she did not look frightened in the least. Will she allow her servant to ask why?"

"Why should I, Margot? I had done nothing wrong."

"And why is my Damoiselle more like Jacquot than herself, when she comes to think of seeing the good God?"

"Ah!—thou wouldst like me to say, Because I have done wrong, I suppose."

"Yes; but I think there was another reason as well."

"What was that, Margot?"

"My Damoiselle is Monseigneur's own child. She knows him. He loves her, and she knows it."

"But we are all children of the good God, Margot."

"Will my Damoiselle pardon me? We are all His creatures: not all His children. Oh no, no!"

"O Margot!" said I suddenly, "didst thou note that tall, dark, handsome knight, who stood on Count Guy's left hand,—Count Raymond of Tripoli?"

"He in the mantle lined with black sable, and gold-barred scarlet hose?"

"That is the man I mean."

"I saw him. Why, if it please my Damoiselle?"

"Didst thou like him?"

"My Damoiselle did not like him?"

Marguerite is very fond of answering one question by another.

"I did not; and I could not tell why."

"Nor I. But I could."

"Then tell me, Margot."

"My Damoiselle, every man has a mark upon his brow which the good God and His angels can see. But few men see it, and in some it is not easy to see. Many foreheads look blank to our eyes. But sooner or later, one of the two marks is certain to shine forth—either the holy cross of our Lord, or the badge of the great enemy, the star that fell from heaven. And what I saw on that man's lofty brow was not the cross of Christ, but the star of Satan."

"Margot, thy queer fancies!" said I, laughing. "Now tell me, prithee, on whose forehead, in this house, thou seest the cross."

"The Lady Judith," she answered without the least hesitation; "and I think, the Lady Sybil. Let my Damoiselle pardon me if I cannot name any other, with certainty. I have weak eyes for such sights. I have hope of Monseigneur Count Guy."

"Margot, Margot!" cried I. "Thou uncharitable old creature, only three! What, not the Lady Queen, nor the Lady Isabel, nor the holy Patriarch! Oh, fie!"

"Let my Damoiselle pardon her servant. The Lady Queen,—ah, I have no right to say. She looks blank, to me. The cross may be there, and I may be blind. But the Patriarch—no! and the Lady Isabel—the good God forgive me if I sin, but I believe I see the star on her."

"And on me?" said I, laughing to hide a curious sensation which I felt, much akin to mortification. Yet what did old Marguerite's foolish fancies matter?

I was surprised to see her worn old eyes suddenly fill with tears.

"My sweet Damoiselle!" she said. "The good God bring out the holy cross on the brow that I love so well! But as yet,—if I speak at all, I must speak truth—I have not seen it there."

I could not make out why I did not like the Count of Tripoli. He is a very handsome man,—even my partial eyes must admit, handsomer than Guy. But there is a strange look in his eyes, as if you only saw the lid of a coffer, and beneath, inside the coffer, there might be something dark and dangerous. Guy says he is a splendid fellow; but Guy always was given to making sudden friendships, and to imagining all his friends to be angels until he discovered they were men. I very much doubt the angelic nature of Count Raymond. I do not like him.

But what a queer fancy this is of old Marguerite's—that Satan puts marks on some people! Yet I cannot help wishing she had not said that about me. And I do not think it was very respectful. She might have said something more civil, whatever she thought. Marguerite always will speak just as she thinks. That is like a villein. It would never do for us nobles.

Guy has now been Regent of the Holy Land for half a year. Some people seem to fancy that he is rather too stern. Such a comical idea!—and of Guy, of all people. I think I know how it is. Guy is very impulsive in enterprise, and very impetuous in pursuing it. And he sees that during the King's illness every thing has gone wrong, and fallen into disorder; and of course it will not do to let things go on so. People must be governed and kept in their places. Of course they must. Why, if there were no order kept, the nobles and the villeins would be all mixed up with each other, and some of the more intelligent and ambitious of the villeins might even begin to fancy themselves on a par with the nobles. For there is a sort of intelligence in some of those people, though it must be of quite a different order from the intellect of the nobles. I used to think villeins never were ambitious. But I have learned lately that some of them do entertain some such feeling. It must be a most dangerous idea to get into a villein's head!—though of course, right and proper enough for a noble. But I cannot imagine why villeins cannot be contented with their place. Did not Providence make them villeins?—and if they have plenty of food, and clothing, and shelter, and fire, and a good dance now and then on the village green, and an extra holiday when the Seigneur's daughter is married, or when his son comes of age,—what can they possibly want more?

I said so to Marguerite.

"Ah, that is all the nobles know!" she answered, quietly enough, but with some fire in the old eyes. "They do not realise that we are men, just as they are. God sent us into His world, with just as much, body and soul, as He did them. We have intellects, and hearts, and consciences, just like them. ('Just like'—only fancy!) I trust the good God may not have to teach it them through pain."

"But they ought to be satisfied," said I. "I am perfectly content with my place in the world. Why are they not contented?"

"It is easier to be content with velvet than duffle," said Marguerite more calmly. "It looks better, and feels softer, too. If my Damoiselle were to try the duffle for a day, perhaps she would complain that it felt harsh."

"To me, very likely," said I. "But a villein would not have a fine skin like mine."

"The finest skin does not always cover the finest feelings," said Marguerite in her dry way.

What a very silly idea! Of course those people cannot have such feelings as I have. It would be quite absurd to think so.

I do think, however, that what vexed me most of any thing, was that Amaury—that silly little boy!—should take it into his head to lecture Guy on the way he chose to govern. As if he could know anything about it! Why, he is two whole years younger than Guy. I told him so, feeling really vexed at his impudence; and what should he say but that I was seven years younger than he. I know that, but I am a woman; and women have always more sense than men. At least, I have more sense than Amaury. I should be an idiot if I had not.

I have made a discovery to-day which has astonished me. Lady Judith has a whole Bible, and Psalter too, of her own, not written in Latin, but in her own tongue in which she was born,—that is, Greek. And she says that a great part of the Bible—all the holy Evangels, and the writings of Messeigneurs the holy Apostles—were originally written in Greek. I always thought that holy Scripture had been written in Latin. I asked her if Latin were not the language the holy angels spoke, and our Lord, when He was upon earth. She answered, that she did not think we knew what language the holy angels spoke, and she should doubt if it were any tongue spoken on earth: but that the good God, and Messeigneurs the holy Apostles, she had no doubt at all, spoke Greek. It sounds very strange.

Lady Isabel has had a violent quarrel with her lord, and goes about with set lips and her head erect, as if she were angry with every one.

I almost think Eschine improves upon acquaintance. Not that I find her any cleverer than I expected, but I think she is good-natured, and seems to have no malice in her. If Amaury storms—as he does sometimes—she just lets the whirlwind blow over her, and never gives him a cross word. I could not do that. I suppose that is why I admire it in Eschine.

A young nun came this morning to visit Lady Judith—one of her own Order. I could not quite understand their conversation. Sister Eudoxia—for that is her name—struck me as being the holiest religious person I have ever seen. She spoke so beautifully, I thought, about the perfection one could attain to in this life: how one's whole heart and soul might be so permeated with God, that one might pass through life without committing any deed of sin, or thinking any evil thought. Not, of course, that I could ever attain to such perfection But it sounded very beautiful and holy.

I was quite surprised to see how constrained, and even cool, Lady Judith was. It was only yesterday that she assented warmly to old Marguerite's saying that no one who served God could love any kind of sin. But with Sister Eudoxia—who spoke so much more charmingly on the same subject—she sat almost silent, and when she did speak, it seemed to be rather in dissent than assent. It puzzled me.

When Sister Eudoxia was gone, Lady Sybil said—

"Oh, what happiness, if one could attain to the perfection of living absolutely without sin!"

"We shall," answered Lady Judith. "But it will not be in this world."

"But Sister Eudoxia says it might be."

"Ah, my poor Sister Eudoxia!" said Lady Judith sadly. "She has taken up with a heresy nearly as old as Christianity itself, and worse than than that of Messire Renaud de Montluc, because it has so much more truth in it. Ay, so much mixture of truth, and so much apparent loveliness, that it can be no wonder if it almost deceive the very elect. Beware of being entangled in it, my children."

"Heresy, holy Mother!" cried Lady Sybil, with a shocked look. "I thought I had never heard any one ascribe more of the glory of our salvation to God than she did. For she said that every thing was done for us by the good Lord, and that even our perfection was wrought by Him for us."

"And not by Him in us," said Lady Judith. "The very point of the heresy, my child. Eudoxia sees no distinction between the righteousness done for us, which is our ground of justification before God, and the holiness wrought in us, which is our conformity to His image. The first was finished on the rood, eleven centuries ago: the second goes on in the heart of every child of God, here and now. She is one of those who, without intending it, or even knowing that they do it, do yet sadly fail to realise the work of the Holy Ghost.

"But how much she spoke of the blessed Spirit!" objected Lady Sybil.

"My daughter," said Lady Judith, with a smile, "hast thou not yet found out the difference between names and things? There are many men who worship God most devoutly, but it is a God they have made to themselves. Every man on earth is ready to love and serve God with his whole heart,—if he may set up God after his own pattern. And what that really means is, a God as like as possible to himself: who will look with perfect complacency on the darling sins which he cherishes, and may then be allowed to condemn with the utmost sternness all evil passions to which he is not addicted."

"That sounds very shocking, holy Mother!" said Lady Sybil.

"We are all liable to the temptation," replied Lady Judith, "and are apt to slide into it ere we know it."

We all wrought for a little time in silence, when Lady Sybil said, "What do you call that heresy, holy Mother, into which you say that Sister Eudoxia has fallen?"

"If thou wilt look into the vision of the Apostle, blessed John, called the Apocalypse," answered Lady Judith, "thou wilt see what Christ our Lord calls it. 'This thou hast, that thou rejectest the teaching of the Nicolaitanes, which I hate."'

"But I thought," said Lady Sybil, looking rather surprised, "that those Nicolaitanes, who were heretics in the early Church, held some very horrible doctrines, and led extremely wicked lives? The holy Patriarch was speaking of them, not long ago."

"Ah, my child," said Lady Judith, "men do not leap, but grow, into great wickedness. Dost thou not see how the doctrine works? First, it is possible to live and do no sin. Secondly, I can live and do no sin. Thirdly, I do live and not sin. Lastly, when this point is reached,—Whatever my spiritual instinct does not condemn—I being thus perfect—cannot be sin. Therefore, I may do what I please. If I lie, murder, steal—which would be dreadful sins in another—they are no sins in me, because of my perfection. And is this following Christ?"

"Assuredly not! But does Sister Eudoxia really imagine that?"

"Oh no!" responded Lady Judith. "She has not reached that point. Comparatively few get so far on the road as that. But that is whither the road is leading them."

"Then what is the root of the heresy?"

"That which I believe lies at the root of every heresy—rejecting God's Word, that we may keep our own traditions. The stem may perhaps consist of two things; the want of sufficient lowliness, and the want of a right knowledge of sin. It is not enough realised that a man's conscience, like all else in him, has been injured by the fall, but conscience is looked on as a heavenly judge, still in its original purity. This, as thou mayest guess, leads to depreciation of the Word of God, and exaltation of the conscience over the Word. And also, it is not properly seen that while a man lives, the flesh shall live with him, and the flesh and the renewed spirit must be in perpetual warfare to the end."

"But we know——" said Lady Sybil,—and there she paused.

"'We know'!" repeated Lady Judith, with a smile. "Ah, my child, we think we know a great deal. And we are like children playing on the seashore, who fancy that they know all that is in the sea, because they have scooped up a little sea-water in their hands. There are heights and depths in God's Word and in God's purposes, which you and I have never reached yet,—which perhaps we shall never reach. 'For as the heaven is high above the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts.'"

I was curious to know what Marguerite would say: she always agrees so strangely with Lady Judith, even when they have not talked the matter over at all. So I said, when I went up to change my dress—

"Margot, dost thou commit sin?"

"My Damoiselle thinks me so perfect, then?" said she, with a rather comical look.

I could not help laughing.

"Well, not quite, when thou opposest my will," said I; "but dost thou know, there are some people who say that they live without sin."

"That may be, when to contradict the holy Evangels is a mark of perfection," said Marguerite drily.

"Well, what hast thou heard about that in thy listening, Margot?" said I, laughing.

"The first thing I heard perplexed me," said she. "It was of Monseigneur Saint John, who said that he that is born of God doth not commit sin: and it troubled me sorely for a time, since I knew I did sin, and feared lest I was therefore not born of God. But one day, Father Eudes read again, from the very same writing, that 'If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father,' and likewise that if we say we have no sin, we are liars. So then I thought, Well! how is this? Monseigneur the holy Apostle would not contradict himself. But still I could not see how to reconcile them, though I thought and thought, till my brain felt nearly cracked. And all at once, Father Eudes read—thanks be to the good God!—something from Monseigneur Saint Paul, which put it all right."

"What was that?"

"Ah! I could not get it by heart. It was too difficult, and very long. But it was something like this: that in a Christian man there are two hearts, of which the one, which is from God, does not sin at all; and the other, which is the evil heart born in us, is always committing sin."

"But, Margot, which of thy two hearts is thyself?"

"Ha! I cannot answer such questions. The good God will know."

"But art thou sure those are not wicked people?"

"Certainly, no. Monseigneur Saint Paul said 'I' and 'me' all through."

"Oh, but, Margot!—he could not have meant himself."

"If he had not meant what he said, I should think he would have mentioned it," said Marguerite in her dry, quaint style.

"Well, a holy Apostle is different, of course," said I. "But it looks very odd to me, that anybody living now should fancy he never does wrong."

"Ah, the poor soul!" said Marguerite. "The good God knows better, if he do not."

CHAPTER VIII.

AS GOOD AS MOST PEOPLE.

The best way to see Divine light is to put out your own candle.

This morning the Lady Princess of Antioch visited the Lady Queen, and remained for the day, taking her departure only just before the gates were closed, for she preferred to camp out at night. She is quite young, and is a niece of the Lady Queen. After she was gone, we were talking about her in the bower, and from her we came to speak of the late Princess, her lord's mother.

"Pray do not talk of her!" said Lady Isabel. "She made herself a bye-word by her shameless behaviour."

"Only thoughtless," remonstrated Lady Sybil gently. "I never thought she deserved what was said of her."

"Oh no!—you never think anybody does," sneered her sister. "I could not have associated with such a woman. She must have known what was said of her. I wonder that she was brazen enough to show herself in public at all."

"But think, Isabel! I do not believe she did know. You know she was not at all clever."

"She was half-witted, or not much better," was the answer. "Oh yes, I know that. But she must have known."

"I do not think she did!" said Lady Sybil earnestly.

"Then she ought to have known!" sharply replied Lady Isabel. "I wonder they did not shut her up. She was a pest to society."

"O Isabel!" deprecated her sister. "She was very good-natured."

"Sybil, I never saw any one like you! You would have found a good word for Judas Iscariot."

"Hardly," said Lady Sybil, just as gently as before. "But perhaps I might have helped finding evil ones."

"There are pearl-gatherers and dirt-gatherers," quietly remarked Lady Judith, who had hitherto listened in silence. "The latter have by far the larger cargo, but the handful of the former outweighs it in value."

"What do you mean, holy Mother?" inquired Lady Isabel, turning quickly to her—rather too sharply, I thought, to be altogether respectful.

"Only 'let her that thinketh she standeth, take heed lest she fall,'" said Lady Judith, with a quiet smile.

"I?" said Lady Isabel, with a world of meaning in her tone.

"My child," was the reply, "they that undertake to censure the cleanness of their neighbours' robes, should be very careful to avoid any spot on the purity of their own. Dost thou not remember our Lord's saying about the mote and the beam?"

"Well," said Lady Isabel, bringing her scissors together with a good deal of snap, "I think that those who associate with such people as the Princess Constantia bring a reflection on their own characters. Snow and soot do not go well together."

"The soot defiles the snow," responded Lady Judith. "But it does not affect the sunbeam."

"I do not understand you," said Lady Isabel bluntly.

"Those who confide in their own strength and goodness, Isabel, are like the snow,—very fair, until sullied; but liable to be sullied by the least speck. But those who take hold of God's strength, which is Christ our Lord, are the sunbeam, a heavenly emanation which cannot be sullied. Art thou the snow, or the sunbeam, my child?"

"Oh dear! I cannot deal with tropes and figures, in that style," answered she, rising. "And my work is finished; I am going now."

I fancied she did not look very sorry for it.

Great events are happening. The Lord King, finding his malady grows rather worse than better, has resolved to abdicate, in favour of his nephew, Lady Sybil's baby son. So to-morrow Beaudouin V. is to be proclaimed throughout the Holy City, and on the Day of Saint Edmund the King,[#] he will be crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They say the Lord King was a very wise man before he became a mesel; and he will still give counsel when needed, the young King being but three years old.

[#] Nov. 20.

I do not quite see what difference the abdication will make. Guy must still remain Regent for several years, and the only change is that he will govern for his step-son instead of his brother-in-law. And I feel a little jealous that Lady Sybil should be passed by. She, not her son, is the next heir of the crown. Why must she be the subject of her own child, who ought to be hers? I really feel vexed about it; and so does Guy, I am sure, though he says nothing—at least to me. As to Lady Sybil herself, she is so meek and gentle, that if a beggar in the street were put over her head, I believe she would kneel to do her homage without a cloud on her sweet face.

However, I felt at liberty to say what I thought to Amaury, though I seldom do it without being annoyed by his answer. And certainly I was now.

"She! She's a woman," said Messire Amaury. "What does a woman know about governing?"

"What does a baby know?" said I.

"Oh, but he will be a man some day," answered Amaury.

"But Guy will govern in either case," I replied, trying not to be angry with him.

He is so silly, and he thinks himself so supremely wise! I do believe, the more foolish people are, the wiser they think themselves.

"Ha!" said he. "Saving your presence, Damoiselle Elaine, I am not so sure that Guy knows much about it."

"Amaury, thou art an idiot!" cried I, quite unable to bear any longer.

"I believe thou hast told me that before," he returned with provoking coolness.

I dashed away, for I knew I might as well talk to Damoiselle Melisende's pet weasel.

I do not like the Count of Tripoli. The more I see of him, the less I like him. And I do not like his fawning professions of friendship for Guy. Guy does not see through it a bit. I believe he only means to use Guy as a ladder by which to climb himself, and as soon as he is at the top, he will kick the ladder down behind him.

Did I not say that Amaury was an idiot? And is it not true? Here is our sister Eschine the mother of a pretty little baby, and instead of being thankful that Eschine and the infant are doing well, there goes Amaury growling and grumbling about the house because his child is a girl. Nay, he does more, for he snarls at Eschine, as if it were her fault, poor thing!

"She knows I wanted a boy!" he said this morning.

Men are such selfish simpletons!

To see how coolly Eschine takes it is the strangest thing of all.

"I was afraid he would be disappointed," she said calmly. "You see, men don't think much of girls."

"Men are all donkeys," said I, "and Amaury deserves to be king of the donkeys."

Eschine seemed to think that very funny.

"Come, Elaine, I cannot let thee say that of my lord, and sit silent. And I think Messire Homfroy de Tours quite as well qualified for the position."

"Ah," said I, "but Lady Isabel keeps her curb much tighter than thou. I really feel almost sorry for him sometimes, when she treats him like a baby before all the world."

"She may do that once too often," said Eschine.

Amaury means to call the baby Héloïse—for a reason which would never have occurred to any one but himself—because we have not had that name in the family before. And Eschine smilingly accepts it, as I believe she would Nebuchadnezzar if he ordered her.

To-day the little King was crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at noon; and in the evening the Damoiselle Héloïse de Lusignan was baptized into the Fold of Christ. The King was very good: I think he inherits much of his mother's sweet disposition. I cannot say as much for my small niece, for she cried with all her heart when the holy Patriarch took her in his arms; and he said it showed that Satan must have taken strong possession of her, and was very hard to dislodge. But no sooner had the holy cross been signed on her, and the holy Patriarch gave her back into the arms of her nurse, than, by the power of our Lord, she was quite another creature, and did not utter a single cry. So wonderful and effectual a thing is the grace of holy baptism!

"Much effect it took on thee, then," growled Amaury, to whom I said this; "for thou didst wait until the water touched thy face, and then didst set up such screams as never were heard from mortal babe before."

"What dost thou know about it?" said I.

"Ha! Don't I?" answered he provokingly.

I have been amused to hear the different ideas of various people, when they first see the baby. The Lady Queen stroked its little face, and said pitifully—"Ah, poor little child, thou art come into a disagreeable world!" Lady Judith took it in her arms, and after rocking it a little, she said—"What possibilities lie hidden here!" Lady Sybil said—"Little darling! what a treasure thou art!" Lady Isabel's comment (for which I shall never forgive her) was—"What an ugly little spectacle! Are young babies no prettier?" Damoiselle Melisende danced it up and down, and sang it a lively nursery song. Guy (like a man) said, with an amused look, "Well! that is a funny little article. Héloïse?—that means 'hidden wisdom,' does it not? Very much hidden just now, I should think." Amaury (that stupid piece of goods!)—"Wretched little creature! Do keep it from crying!" And lastly, old Marguerite came to see her nursling's nursling's nursling. I wondered what she would say. She took it in her arms, and looked at it for some time without speaking. And then she said softly—

"Little child! He that was once a little Child, bless thee! And may He give thee what He sees best. That will most likely be something different from what we see."

"O Marguerite!" said I. "That may be an early death."

"That would be the best of all, my Damoiselle.[#] Ah! the eyes of a noble maiden of seventeen years see not so far as the eyes of a villein woman of seventy. There are good things in this world—I do not deny it. But the best thing is surely to be safe above this world,—safe with the good Lord."

[#] It would have been well for Héloïse, who bears a spotted reputation in history.

"I do not want to lose my baby, Margot," said Eschine, with a rather sad smile.

"Ah no, Dame, you do not," replied Marguerite, answering the smile with a brighter one. "But if the good Lord should call her, it is best to let her rise and go to Him."

Again we hear something more of those strange rumours, as though the people were not content under Guy's government. But what does it signify? They are only villeins. Yet villeins can insult nobles, no doubt. Sister Eudoxia (who was here again yesterday) says they actually talk of a petition to the King, to entreat him to displace Guy, and set some one else in his stead. The thought of their presuming to have an idea on the question! As if they could understand anything about government! Discontented under Guy! my Guy! They are nothing better than rebels. They ought to be put down, and kept down.

The Lady Queen has received a letter from her kindred at Byzantium, from which she hears that the young Byzantine Cæsar, who is but a child, has been wedded to a daughter of the Lord King of France. Dame Agnes is her name, and she is but eight years old.

I wonder if it is very, very wicked to hate people? Old Marguerite will have it that it is just as bad as murder, and that the holy Evangel says so. I am sure she must have listened wrong. For I do hate Count Raymond of Tripoli. And I can't help it. I must and will hate him. He has won Guy's ear completely, and Guy sees through his eyes. I cannot bear him, the fawning, handsome scoundrel—I am sure he is one! They say, too, that he is not over good to his wife, for I am sorry to say he has a wife; I pity her, poor creature!

Lady Judith asked me, when I repeated this, who "they" were.

"I do not know, holy Mother," said I; "every body, I suppose."

"I would not put too much faith in 'them,' Helena," she said. "'They' often say a great deal that is not true."

"But one must attend to it, holy Mother!" I answered.

"Why?" replied she.

"Oh, because it would never do!"

"What would never do?"

"To despise the opinion of society."

"Why?" she gently persisted.

Really, I found it rather difficult to say why.

"Methinks, Helena, I have seen thee despise the opinion of society, when it contradicted thy will. Is it not more reasonable to despise it, when it contradicts God's will?"

"Holy Mother, I pray you, tell me—is that the world?" said I. "Because my nurse, old Marguerite, says, that Monseigneur Saint John bade us beware of the world, and the flesh, as well as the Devil: and I am not quite sure what it means, except that the world is other people, and the flesh is me. But how can I be inimical to my own salvation?"

"My child," said Lady Judith gently, "when some duty is brought to thy remembrance, is there nothing within thee which feels as if it rose up, and said, 'Oh, but I do not want to do that!'—never, Helena?"

"Oh yes! very often," said I.

"That is the flesh," said she. "And 'they that are of Christ the flesh have crucified, with its passions and its lusts.'"

"Oh dear!" I exclaimed, almost involuntarily.

"Very unpleasant, is it not?" said Lady Judith, smiling. "Ah, dear child, the flesh takes long in dying. Crucifixion is a very slow process; and a very painful process. They that are not willing to 'endure hardness' had better not enlist in the army of Jesus Christ."

"Ah, that is what I always thought," said I; "religious persons cannot be very happy. Of course, it would not be right for them; they wait till the next world. And yet—old Marguerite always seems happy. I do not quite understand it."

"Child!" Lady Judith dropped her broidering, and the deep, sweet grey eyes looked earnestly into mine. "What dost thou know of happiness? Helena, following Christ is not a hardship; it is a luxury. The happiness—or rather the mirth—of this world is often incompatible with it; but it is because the one is so far above the other that it extinguishes it, as the light of the sun extinguishes the lamp. Yet who would prefer the lamp before the sunlight? Tell me, Helena, hast thou any wish to go to Heaven?"

"Certainly, holy Mother."

"And what dost thou expect to find there? I should be glad to know."

I could hardly tell where to begin.

"Well," I said, after a moment's thought, "I expect to fly, and to enjoy myself intensely; and never to have another pain, nor shed a tear; and to see all whom I love, and be always with them, and love them and be loved by them for ever and ever. And there will be all manner of delights and pleasures. I cannot think of anything else."

"And that is thy Heaven?" said Lady Judith, with a smile in which I thought the chief ingredient was tender compassion, though I could not see why. "Ah, child, it would be no Heaven at all to me. Verily, 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.' Pleasure, and ease, and earthly love—these are thy treasures, Helena. 'For where thy treasure is, there shall thine heart be.'"

"But what is the matter with my Heaven?" said I, feeling a little aggrieved.

"Why, my child, thou hast left out the central figure. What were a coronation if there were no king? or a wedding where there were no bride? Why, what was left would be equivalent to nothing. Ask thine old nurse, and see if thy Heaven would satisfy her. Ah, 'whom have we in Heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that we desire in comparison of Thee!' Old Marguerite understands that. Dost thou, my maiden?"

I shook my head. I felt too mortified to speak. To have a poor, ignorant villein woman held up to me, as knowing more than I knew, and being happier than I, really was humiliating. Yet I could not resent it from one so high as Lady Judith.

Lady Judith would have said more, I fancy, but Melisende came in, and she quietly dropped the matter, as she generally does if any third person enters. But the next morning, as Marguerite was dressing my hair, I asked her what her notion of Heaven was.

"Inside with the blessed Lord, and the Devil and all the sins and evil things left outside," she said. "Ah, it will be rest to be rid of evil; but it will be glory to be with the Lord."

"And the pleasures, and the flying, and all the delightful things, Margot!" said I.

"Ah, yes, that will be very nice," she admitted. "And to meet those whom we have lost—that will be the very next best thing to seeing the good Lord."

"Hast thou lost many whom thou hast loved, Margot?"

"Ah, no—very few, compared with some. My mother, and my husband, and my two children:—that is all. I never knew my father, and I was an only child. But it may be, the fewer one has to love, the more one loves them."

"An only child!" said I. "But Perette calls thee aunt?"

"Ah, yes, she is my husband's niece,—the same thing."

I think Marguerite seems to agree with Lady Judith, though of course she does not express herself so well.

And I cannot help wondering how they arrange in Heaven. I suppose there will be thrones nearest the good Lord for the kings and the princes who will be there: and below that, velvet settles for the nobles; and beneath again, the crowd of common people. I should think that would be the arrangement. Because, of course, no one could expect them to mingle all together. That would be really shocking.

Yet I cannot altogether make it out. If Messeigneurs the holy Apostles were originally fishermen, and worked for their living—it is very queer. I do not understand it. But I suppose the holy angels will take care to put it right, and have a proper barrier between the Apostles and the nobles, and the poor villeins, who are admitted of special grace, through their own good deeds, and the super-abundant merits of the holy saints.

In the afternoon, when Guy was in audience of the Lord King and the Lady Queen, and Lady Isabel and Melisende were riding forth, with Messire Homfroy and Amaury as their cavaliers, I found Lady Judith and Lady Sybil busy spinning, and I brought my broidery and sat down with them. We did not talk much for a while,—only a few words now and then: when all at once Lady Judith said—

"Helena, wilt thou try this needle for thy work?"

I took the needle, and threaded it, and set to work again: but I found to my surprise that I could not get on at all. The needle would hardly go through the silk, and it left an ugly hole when it did. Lady Judith went on with her spinning for a few minutes, but at length she looked up and said—

"Well, Helena, how dost thou like that needle?"

"Not at all, holy Mother, if it please you," said I, "for I cannot get on with it."

She selected another, and gave it me.

"Oh, this is beautiful for broidery!" I said; "so fine and sharp."

"It is the answer to a question thou wert asking me yesterday," said Lady Judith, "and I gave thee no reply. Canst thou guess what the question was?"

I could not, and said so. I did not remember asking anything that had to do with needles, and I never thought of any hidden meaning.

"Thy question was, What is the world?—and, what harm does the world do to us? That needle that I first gave thee has its point blunted. And that is what the world does to a child of God. It blunts his point."

"I do not understand," said I.

"Little Helena," said Lady Judith, "before a point can be blunted, there must be one to blunt. Thou couldst not sew with a wooden post. So, before the world can injure thy spiritual life, there must be spiritual life to injure. There is no poison that will harm a dead man."

"But, holy Mother, are there two worlds?" said I. "For religious persons give up the world."

"My child, thine heart is a citadel which the foe can never enter, unless there be a traitor within the walls to open the postern gate. But there is such a traitor, Helena; and he is always on the watch. Be thou ever on the watch too. Yet another matter stands first:—Who reigns in thy citadel? Hast thou ever given thine heart to God, maiden?"

"Can I give my heart, holy Mother? It seems to me that love is rather like a plant that grows, than like a treasure that is given."

"Thou art right: but the planting must be sometime. Hast thou ever asked God to take thine heart? For as a holy man of old hath said,—'If Thou leave me to myself, I shall not give it Thee.'"

I shook my head. It all sounded strange to me.

"If the usurper is in the citadel, dear child, he will hold the gates against the rightful King: and, Helena, there are no traitors in His camp. Thou art not a sword, nor a shield, which can do nothing of itself; but a human creature with a living will, which can choose either to open the gates to the King, or to shut them against His trumpeter when He sends thee summons to surrender. Nay, thou not only canst choose; thou must: at this moment, at every moment, thou art choosing. What message hast thou sent back to thy rightful Lord, both by right and purchase? Is it 'Come Thou, and reign over me;' or is it, 'Go back to Thy place, for I will have none of Thee'?"

I would willingly not have answered: but I felt it would be to fail in respect to Lady Judith's age and position. I stammered out something about hoping that I should make my salvation some time.

"My child, didst thou ever do any thing at any time but now?" said Lady Judith.

I suppose that is true; for it is always now, when we actually come to do it.

"But, holy Mother, there is so much to give up if one becomes religious!" said I.

"What is there to give up, that thou couldst take with thee into Heaven?"

"But there will be things in Heaven to compensate," said I.

"And is there nothing in Christ to compensate?" she replied, with a momentary flash in the grey eyes. "What is Heaven but God? 'The City had no need of the sun, for the glory of God did lighten her:' 'and temple I saw none in her, for the Lord God the Almighty is Temple to her, and the Lamb.'"

Lady Sybil seemed interested; but I must confess that I thought the conversation had assumed a very disagreeable tone; and I wondered how it was that both Lady Judith and my old Marguerite spoke to me as if they thought I did not serve God. It is very strange, when I hear the holy mass sung every morning, and I have only just offered another neuvaine at the Holy Sepulchre. However, Easter will soon be here, and I mean to be very attentive to my devotions throughout the Holy Week, and see if that will satisfy Lady Judith. I don't want her to think ill of me. I like her too well for that, though I do wish she would not talk as if she fancied I did not serve God. I am sure I am quite as good as most people, and that is saying a great deal.

No, it can never be wrong to hate people. It can't be, and it shan't! And I just wish I could roast that Count of Tripoli before the fire in the Palace kitchen till he was done to a cinder. I am white-hot angry; and like Jonah the Prophet, I do well to be angry. The mean, fawning, sneaking, interloping rascal! I knew what he meant by his professions of love and friendship! Guy's eyes were shut, but not mine. The wicked, cruel, abominable scoundrel!—to climb up with Guy's help to within an inch of the top where he sat, and then to leap the inch and thrust him out of his seat! I cannot find words ugly enough for him. I hate, hate, hate him!

To have supplanted my Guy! After worming himself into the confidence of the Lord King, through Guy's friendship—ay, there is the sting!—to have carried to the King all the complaints that he heard against Guy, until he, poor helpless Seigneur! (I don't feel nearly so vexed with him) really was induced to believe Guy harsh and incapable, and to take out of his hands the government of the kingdom. And then he put in that serpent, that false Judas, that courtly hypocrite—Oh dear! I cannot find words to describe such wickedness—and he is Regent of the Holy Land, and Guy must kneel to him.

I could cut him in slices, and enjoy doing it!

I am angry with Melisende, who can find nothing to say but—"Ah, the fortune of Courts—one down to-day, another up to-morrow." And I am almost angry with Marguerite, who says softly—"Hush, then, my Damoiselle! Is it not the good God?"

No, it is not. It is the Devil who sends sorrow upon us, and makes us hate people, and makes people be hateful. I am sure the good God never made Count Raymond do such wicked things.

Instead of casting Adam and Eva out of Paradise,—Oh why, why did the good God not cast out the Devil?

"Is my Damoiselle so much wiser than the Lord?" quietly asks Marguerite.

I cannot understand it. The old cry comes up to me again,—Oh, if I could know! Why cannot I understand?

And then Lady Judith lays her soft hand on my head, and says words which I know come from the holy Evangel,—"'What I do, thou knowest not now.'" Ay, I know not I must not know. I can only stretch forth appealing hands into the darkness, and feel nothing. Not like her and Marguerite. They too stretch forth helpless hands into the darkness, but they find God.

It must be a very different thing. Why cannot I do the same? Is He not willing that I should find Him too?—or am I not worthy?

I suppose it must be my fault. It seems as if things were always one's own fault. But I do not think they are any better on that account; especially when you cannot make out where your fault lies.

Guy behaves like a saint. He does not see any fault in Count Raymond: I believe he won't. Lady Sybil, poor darling! looks very grieved; but not one word of complaint can I get her to utter.

As to Amaury, when I have quite finished slicing up the Count, if he does not mind, I shall begin with him. What does he say but—"Well, a great deal of it is Guy's own fault. Why wasn't he more careful? Surely, if he has any sense, he might expect to be envied and supplanted, when he had climbed to such a height."

"If he has any sense!" Pretty well for Messire Amaury!

CHAPTER IX.

ELAINE FINDS MORE THAN SHE EXPECTED.

"And when I know not what Thou dost,

I'll wait the light above."

—DODDRIDGE.

Both Guy and Lady Sybil are in a state of the highest ecstasy, and say that they are abundantly recompensed for all their past disappointments. And this is because they are disappointed just like Amaury, but they bear it in as different a style as possible. I think, if I were they, I should consider I had more right to be troubled of the two, for little Héloïse is a strong child enough, and is growing almost pretty: while dear Lady Sybil's baby girl is a little delicate thing, that the wind might blow away. Of course I shall love her far better, just because she is Guy's and Sybil's; and she crept into the warmest corner of my heart when she showed me her eyes—not Lady Sybil's gentle grey, but those lovely flashing dark eyes of Guy's; the most beautiful eyes, I think, that were ever seen.

"Marguerite, is not she charming?" I cried.

"Ah, the little children always are," said the old woman.

(I don't agree with her—little children can be great teases.) But Marguerite had more to say.

"My Damoiselle sees they are yet innocent of actual sin; therefore they are among the best things in God's world. I may be wrong, but I think the good God must have been the loveliest babe ever seen. How I should have liked to be there!—if the holy Mother would have allowed me to hold Him in my arms!"

"Ah, I suppose only the holiest saints would be allowed to touch Him," said I.

"I am not so sure, if my Damoiselle will pardon me. She was no saint, surely, that crept into the Pharisee's house to break the casting-bottle[#] on His feet; yet the hardest word she had from Him was 'Go in peace.' Ah, I thank the good God that His bidding is not, 'Come unto Me, all ye that are holy.' There are few of us would come, if it were! But 'Come unto Me, all ye that are weary'—that takes us all in. For we are all weary some time. The lot of a woman is a weary lot, at the best."

[#] Used to sprinkle perfumes.

"Well, it may be, among the villeins," said I.

"My Damoiselle, I never saw more bitter tears than those of the old Lady de Chatelherault—mother of the Lady de Lusignan—when her fair-haired boy was brought in to her in the bower, with the green weeds in his long bright hair, and the gold broidery of his velvet tunic tarnished by the thick stagnant water. Early that morning he had been dancing by her, with the love-light in his beautiful blue eyes; and now, when the dusk fell, they laid him down at her feet, drowned and dead, with the light gone out of the blue eyes for ever. Ah, I have seen no little sorrow amongst men and women in my seventy years!—but I never saw a woman look, more than she did, as if she had lost the light of life. The villeins have a hard lot, as the good God knows; but all the sorrow of life is not for the villeins—no, no!"

How oddly she puts things! I should never have thought of supposing that the villeins had any sorrow. A certain dull kind of coarse grief, or tired feeling, perhaps, they may have at times, like animals: but sorrow surely is a higher and finer thing, and is reserved for the nobles. As to old Marguerite herself, I never do quite think of her as a villein. She has dwelt with nobles all her life, so to speak, and is not of exactly the same common sort of stuff that they are.

Yesterday afternoon Lady Sybil and I were alone in the bower, and she had the baby in her arms. The little creature is to be made a Christian on Sunday. I asked her what name it was to have. I expected her to say either Marie, which is the Lady Queen's name, or Eustacie, the name of Guy's mother. But she said neither. She answered, "Agnes." And she spoke in that hushed, reverent voice, in which one instinctively utters the names of the beloved dead. I could not think whose it could be. The name has never been in our House, to my knowledge; and I was not aware of it in Lady Sybil's line.

"Dost thou not know whose name it is, Helena?" asked Lady Sybil. I fancy she answered my look.

"No," said I.

"My dear lord has been very good to me," she said. "He made not the least objection. It was my mother's name, Helena."

"Oh!" said I, enlightened. "Lady Sybil, do tell me, can you remember the Lady Queen your mother? How old were you when she died?"

She did not answer me for an instant. When I looked up, I saw tears dropping slowly on the infant's robes.

"When she—died!" There was a moment's pause. "Ay, there are more graves than men dig in the churchyard! When she—died,—Helena, I was six years old."

"Then you can remember her?" I said eagerly. "Oh, I wish I could remember mine."

"Ay, memory may be intense bliss," she answered; "or it may be terrible torture. I can remember a fair face bent down over mine, soft, brooding arms folded round me, loving kisses from gentle lips. And then——O Helena, did my lord tell thee she was dead? It was kind of him; for he knows."[#]

[#] I trust it will not be imagined from this that I think lightly of "white lies." Romanists, as a rule, are very lenient towards them.

Lady Sybil was sobbing.

"Then she is not dead?" I said, in a low voice.

"I do not know!" she replied. "No one knows. She is dead to us. Oh, why, why does holy Church permit such terrible things?—What am I saying? May the good Lord pardon me if I speak against Him!—But I cannot understand why it must be. They had been wedded nearly ten years, Helena,—I mean my parents,—when it was discovered that they were within the prohibited degrees. Why cannot dispensations be given when such things occur? They knew nothing of it. Why must they be parted, and she be driven into loneliness and obscurity, and I—— Well, it was done. A decree of holy Church parted them, and she went back to her people. We have never heard another word about her. But those who saw her depart from Jerusalem said she seemed like one whose very heart was broken."

"And she never came back?" I said pityingly.

"Is it much wonder?" answered Lady Sybil, in a low voice, rocking the child gently in her arms. "It would have been much, I think, for the crowned and anointed Queen of Jerusalem to steal into her capital as Damoiselle de Courtenay. But it would have been far more for the wife and mother to come suing to her supplanter for a sight of her own children. No, I cannot wonder that she never, never came back."

I was silent for a little while, then I said—

"Was the Lord King as grieved as she? I cannot understand, if so, why they should not have obtained a dispensation, and have been married over again."

Lady Sybil shook her head, and I saw another tear drop on the baby's robe.

"No, Helena," she said, hardly above a whisper: "I do not think he was. He had the opportunity of allying himself with the Cæsars. And there are men to whom a woman is a woman, and one woman is just as good as another, or very nearly so. Do men selling a horse stop to consider whether it will be as happy with the new master as the old? They do not care. And, very often, they cannot understand."

Ay, Amaury is one of that sort.

"And you think—if she be alive—that she will never come?" I asked.

"I hope she might. But I think she will not. Ah, how I have hoped it! Helena, hast thou wondered how it is that nothing short of absolute impossibility will suffer me to depute to another the daily distribution of the dole at the postern gate to those poor women that come for alms? Canst thou not guess that amongst all the faces I look but for one—for the one that might creep in there unrecognised to look on me, and that must never, never go away with a soreness at her heart, saying, 'She was not there!' Every loaf that I give to a stranger, I say, 'Pray for the soul of Agnes of Anjou!' And then, if some day she should creep in among the rest, and I should not know her—ah! but I think I should, if it were only by the mother-hunger in the eyes—but if she should, and hear that, and yet not speak, she will say in her heart, 'Sybil loves me yet.' And if she could only creep one step further,—'God loves me yet!' For He does, Helena. Maybe He has comforted her long ago: but if she should not have found it out, and be still stretching forth numb hands in the darkness—and if I could say it to her! Now thou knowest why I call the babe by her name. I know not where she is, nor indeed if she is on earth. But He knows. And He may let her hear it. If she come to know that I have called my child by her name, she may not feel quite so lost and lonely. I have no other way to say to her,—'I have not forgotten thee; nor has God. I love thee; I would fain help thee. He loves thee and is ready to save thee.' Who can tell?—she may hear."

"Oh dear, this is a bad world!" said I. "Why are people so hard on each other? We are all fellow-sinners, I suppose."

"Ah, Helena!" said Lady Sybil, with a sorrowful smile. "Hast thou not found, dear, that the greater sinner a man is himself, very generally, the harder he will be on other sinners—especially when their sins are of a different type from his own. The holier a man is, the more he hates sin, and yet the more tenderly will he deal with the sinner. For as sin means going away from God, so holiness must mean coming near God. And God is more merciful than men to all who come to Him for mercy."

Lady Judith came in while the last words were being spoken.

"I never can quite tell," said I, "what sin is. Why should some things be sin, and other things not be sin?"

"Go on, Helena," said Lady Judith, turning round with a smile. "Why should so many things be wrong, which I like, and so many things be right, which I do not like?"

"Well, holy Mother, it is something like that," said I, laughing. "Will you please to tell me why?"

"Because, my child, thou hast inherited a sinful nature."

"But I do not like sin—as sin," said I.

"Then temptation has no power over thee. Is it so? Art thou never 'drawn away of thine own lust, and enticed'?"

"Well, I am not perfect," said I. "I suppose nobody expects to be."

"Yet without absolute perfection, Helena, thou canst never enter Heaven."

"O holy Mother!" cried I.

"Where art thou about to get it?" said she.

"I am sure I do not know!" I replied blankly.

"Thou shouldst know, my child," she responded gently. "Think about it."

I cannot guess what she means. I am sure I may think about that for a year, and be no nearer when I have done.

I have had a great pleasure to-day, in the shape of a letter from Monseigneur our father, addressed to Guy, but meant for us all three. He wrote about six months after we set out; and I should hope he has before now received my letter, which I sent off on the first opportunity after our arrival in the Holy City. Every body seems to be well, and Alix has a baby boy, whom she means to call after Monseigneur—Geoffrey. There is no other special news. Level, he says, misses us sorely, and lies at my door with his nose between his paws, as if he were considering what it could all mean. I wonder whether he thinks he comes to any satisfactory solution.

The Lord King, I hear, has been more indisposed for some days past. The Lady Queen is very attentive to him. Lady Isabel and her lord have gone through another tremendous quarrel,—about what I do not know.

Early yesterday morning our sister Eschine's second baby was announced, and in the afternoon the holy Patriarch baptized it by Guy's name. Amaury was in ecstasies with his boy; but alas! in the evening the poor little thing fell into convulsions, and barely lived to see the dawn of another day. Amaury passed from the climax of triumph to the depths of despair. He growled and snarled at every body, and snapped at Eschine in particular, as though he thought she had let her child die on purpose to vex him. That she could be in as much distress as himself, did not seem to occur to him. If anything could have provoked me more than Amaury's unreasonableness, it would have been the calm patience with which Eschine took it. There he stalked about, grumbling and growling.

"Why did you all let the child die?" he wanted to know—as if we could have helped it. "There is not one of you has any sense!"—as if he had! "Alix's boy manages to live. She knows how to treat him. Women are all idiots!" (Alix, apparently, not being a woman.)

Poor Eschine lay still, a few tears now and then making their way down her white cheeks, and meekly begging her lord and master's pardon for what she had not done. When he was gone, she said—I think to anticipate what she saw on the tip of my tongue—

"Thou knowest, Elaine dear, he is not angry with me. Men do set such store by a son. It is only natural he should be very much distressed."

She will persist in making excuses for him.

"Distressed?—well!" said I. "But he does not need to be so silly and angry. Natural!—well, yes,—I think it is natural to Amaury to be an idiot. I always did think so."

"O Lynette! don't, dear!" pleaded Eschine.

I am beginning to think I have been rather unjust to Eschine when I said there was nothing in her; but it has taken a long while to come out. And it seems to come rather in the form of doing and bearing, than of thinking and saying.

But that Amaury is a most profound donkey no mortal man can doubt,—or at any rate, no mortal woman.

I was awfully startled this morning when Marguerite undrew my curtains, and told me that our Lord King Beaudouin had been commanded to God. It seems now that for some time past he has been more ill than any one knew, except the Lady Queen his stepmother. What that wicked Count of Tripoli may have known, of course, I cannot say. But I am sure he has had a hand in the late King's will. The crown is left to the little King, Beaudouin V., and our sweet Sybil is disinherited. What that really means, I suppose, is that the Count is jealous of Guy's influence over his Lady, and imagines that he can sway the child better than the mother.

There are to be various changes in consequence of the Lord King's death. The Lady Queen returns to her own family at Byzantium. I do hope Lady Judith will not go with her; but I am very much afraid she may. Guy talks about retiring to his city of Ascalon, but though I am sure Lady Sybil will submit to his will, I can see she does not want to leave her boy, though I do not believe she distrusts that wicked Tripoli as I do.

I asked Marguerite if she did not feel very angry.

"No," she said quietly. "Is my Damoiselle very angry?"

"Indeed I am," said I.

"Does my Damoiselle know what are the good Lord's purposes for Monseigneur Count Guy? It is more than old Marguerite does."

"Of course not: but I see what has happened."

"And not what will happen? Ah, that is not seeing much."

"But what can happen, to put things right again, Margot?"

"Ha! Do I know, I? No better than Monseigneur Saint Jacob, when his son, Monseigneur Saint Joseph, sent for his little brother, and refused to send the meal until he came. That is so beautiful a history!—and so many times repeated in this world. The poor old father!—he thought all these things were against him. He did not know what the good God was making ready for him. He did not know! And the good God will never be hurried. It is we that are in a hurry, poor children of time,—we want every thing to happen to-day. But He, who has eternity to work in, can afford to let things take their time. My Damoiselle does not know what old Helweh said to me yesterday."

"No. Who is Helweh?" said I.

"She is an Arab woman who serves in the kitchen."

"A Paynim? O Marguerite! What can a Paynim say worth hearing? Or is she a Christian?"

"If to be baptized is to be a Christian, as people always say, then Helweh is a Christian. But if to be a Christian is really to know and follow the Lord Christ—and it seems to me as if the Evangel always meant that—then I do not know. I am afraid Helweh does not understand much about that."

"Oh, if she has been christened, she must be a Christian," said I. "Well, what did she say?"

"She said—'All things come to him who knows how to wait.' It is a Saracen proverb."

"Well, I do not believe it."

"Ah, let my Damoiselle pardon me, but it is true."

"Well!" said I, half laughing, "then I suppose I do not know how to wait."

"I do not think my Damoiselle does," answered Marguerite quietly.

"Wilt thou teach me, Margot?"

"Ha! It takes the good God to teach that."

"I should not think it wanted much teaching."

"Let my Damoiselle bear with her servant. The good God has been teaching it to me for seventy years, and I dare not make so bold as to say I have learned it yet."

"Why, Margot, thou art as quiet, and calm, and patient as a stone."

"Ah! not here," she said, laying her hand upon her bosom. "Perhaps here,—and here,"—touching her eyes and lips. "But down there,—no!"

"But for what, or for whom, art thou waiting, Margot?" I asked, rather amused.

"Ha!—it ought to be only whom. But it is too often what. We are like the little children, waiting for the father to come home, but thinking more of the toys and bonbons he may bring than of himself. And then there is another thing: before we can learn to wait, we must learn to trust."

"To trust what, Margot?"

"I believe we all trust in something, if my Damoiselle pleases. A great many trust in themselves; and a great many more trust in circumstances,—fate, or chance, or luck,—as they call it. Some few trust in other human creatures; and their waking is often the saddest of all. But it seems as if the one thing we found it hardest to do was to trust the good God. He has to drive us away, often, from every other trust, before we will learn to trust Him. Oh, how we must grieve His heart, when He has done so much for us, and yet we will not trust Him!"

I wonder what she means. I feel as if I should like to know, and could not tell how to begin.

The Lady Queen is gone back to her people. And I am so glad—Lady Judith is not gone with her. I was sadly afraid she would do. But Melisende is gone, and Messire Renaud de Montluc, for whom the Lady Queen trusts to obtain some high position at the Court of the Byzantine Cæsar.

I am not at all sorry that Messire Renaud is gone. He made me feel uncomfortable whenever I looked at him. I cannot well express my feeling in words; but he gave me a sensation as if nothing stood on any thing, and every thing was misty and uncertain. I fancy some people like that sort of feeling. I detest it. I like figures (though Amaury says it is a very unladylike taste) because they are so definite and certain. Two and two make four; and they will make four, do what you please with them. No twisting and turning will persuade them to be either three or five. Now I like that—far better than some arts, more interesting in themselves, such as music, painting, or embroidery, of which people say, "Yes, it is very fair,—very good,—but of course it might be better." I like a thing that could not be better. Guy says that is very short-sighted, and argues a want of ambition in me. I do not quite see that. If a thing be the best it can possibly be, why should I want it to be better?

"Oh, but one wants an aim," says Guy; "one must have a mark to shoot at. If I were besieging a castle, and knew beforehand that I could not possibly take it, it would deprive me of all energy and object. There is nothing so devoid of interest as doing something which leads to nothing, and is worth nothing when done."

"Well," I say then, "I think if sieges and wars were done away with, it would be no bad thing. Just think what misery they cause."

But such an outcry comes upon me then! Amaury informs me that he is incomparably astonished at me. Is not war the grandest of all employments? What on earth could the nobles do, if there were no wars? Would I have them till the earth like peasants, or read and write like monks, or sew and dress wounds like women?

And Guy says, good-naturedly,—"Oh, one of Elaine's curious notions. She never thinks like other people."

"But think," I say, "of the suffering which comes from war—the bereft widows and fatherless children, and human pain and sorrow. Does a woman weeping over her husband's corpse think war grand, do you suppose?"

"Stuff!" says Amaury. "Can't she get another?"

(Would he say, if Eschine were to die,—"Never mind, I can get another"? Well, I should not much wonder if he would!)

Once, after a rather keen contest of this sort, I asked old Marguerite if she liked war. I saw her eyes kindle.

"Damoiselle," she said, "my husband followed his Seigneur to the war, and left me ill at home in my cot. He had no power to choose, as my Damoiselle must know. The night fell, and the Seigneur came home with banners flying, and along the village street there were bonfires and rejoicings for a great victory. But my husband did not come. I rose from my sick-bed, and wrapped myself in a sheepskin, and went out to the fatal field. Like a candle in the sunlight, the pain of the heart put out the pain of the body. What I saw that night my Damoiselle will not ask. It were not meet to rehearse in the ears of a young noble lady. I do not know how I bore it, only that I did bear—going from one to another in the moonlight, and turning my lantern on the dead still faces, ever looking for that face which I feared to find. And at last I found him, my Piers, the one love of my young life,—where the fight had been the most terrible, and the dead lay thickest. I knew that he had acquitted himself right well, for his face was to the foe, and the broken shaft of his Seigneur's pennon was still grasped tightly in his hand. Damoiselle, there was no funeral pageant, no table tomb, no herald's cry for him. Strangers' hands buried him where he lay, as they might have buried the Seigneur's horse, if need were. And there were no white weeds and seclusion for me, his young widow, who knelt by my baby's cradle, too miserable for tears. But may be, in those halls where all souls are alike before the King of Kings, the Voice from the Throne said to him, 'Well done!' And the Voice did verily say to me, 'Fear not! Come unto Me, and I will give thee rest.'—Ah, my Damoiselle knows now what her old nurse thinks of war."

Oh, why must there be such things?

"How else could a knight win his spurs?" indignantly demands Amaury.

But surely, the winning of Amaury's spurs is not the only thing of any consequence in the world. Does the good God Himself take no account of widows' tears and orphans' wails, if only the knights win their spurs? Could not some other way be contrived for the spurs, which would leave people alive when it was finished?

"Now, Elaine, don't be such a simpleton!" says Amaury.

So at last, as nobody else (except Marguerite, who is nobody) seems to understand me, I ask Lady Judith what she thinks.

"My child," she says, "'He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and snappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariot in the fire.' 'The Father of the age to come, the Prince of Peace!' It is one of His fairest titles. But not till He comes, Helena. Till then, earth will be red with the blood of her sons, and moistened with the tears of her daughters. Let us pray for His coming."

"But holy Mother, that is ages off!" said I.

"Is it?" she made answer. "Has the Lord told thee so much, Helena? Ah! it may be—I know not, but I see nothing else to keep Him—it may be, that if all the earth would come to Him to-day, He would come to us to-morrow."

"Holy Mother, I do not know what you mean by 'coming' to Him!"

"Dear Helena," she said gently, "thou wilt not know, till thou art ready to come."

"But I do not understand that," said I. "How am I to get ready?"

"'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.' 'If thou knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given to thee water of life.' Art thou not athirst? and dost thou not know the gift of God, dear maiden? Then ask Him to bestow on thee the thirst, and the knowledge."

I really do not know whether it was right or wrong, but that night, after I had finished my Credo, and Paters, and the holy Angelical Salutation, I ventured to say, in my own words,—"Fair Father, Jesu Christ, give me what Lady Judith and Marguerite talk about." I hope it was not very wicked. I did so tremble! And I do not properly know what this thing is, only that it seems to make them happy; and why should I not be happy too? I suppose the good God will know all about it. And as He appears to be so condescending as to listen to Marguerite, who is but a villein, surely He will hear me, who am noble.

It is so odd that Amaury, who is such a simpleton himself, should be perpetually calling me a simpleton. I do think, the more foolish people are, the more fond they are of exhorting others not to be silly. It is very funny. But this world is a queer place.

"It is, indeed, Lynette," says Guy, with mock gravity, when I make the remark to him. "The queerest place I have been in these thirty years."

As Guy is scarcely twenty-seven, it may be supposed I cannot help laughing.

But there is another queer thing. It does really seem as if villeins—at least some villeins—had genuine feelings, just like us nobles. I have always thought that it was because Marguerite had associated so much with nobles, that she seemed a little different—just as you might impart the rose-scent to a handkerchief, if you shut it in a drawer with rose-leaves. But I know she did not become my mother's nurse until after her husband was dead: so she must have had feelings before that, while she was no better off than any other villein. It is very incomprehensible. And I suppose, too, when one comes to think about it, we are all children of Adam and Eva. How did the difference come, to begin with?

It is very difficult to tell how things began. It is a great deal easier to see how they end. Who would suppose, if men had never found out, that the great river Danube, which rolls into the Black Sea, almost like a sea itself in volume, came from the meltings of the ice and snow upon the hills of Switzerland?

"Ha!" says Marguerite, when I repeat my thoughts to her, "the great God is so rich that He can bring the large things out of the small. We others, we can only bring the small out of the large."

"That sounds like spoiling things," said I.

"Men are very apt to spoil what they touch," she answered. "The good Lord never touches anything that He does not leave more beautiful. Has He not blessed childhood and manhood, by becoming Child and Man? Is not the earth fairer since He dwelt on it? and the little children dearer, since He took them in His arms and blessed them? Ah, He might have cared for me, and felt with me, just as much, if He had never been a Man: but it would not have been the same thing to me. And He knew it. When we love one very much, Damoiselle, we love what he has touched: and if he touch us, ourselves, it sends a delicious thrill through us. The good Lord knew that when He took on Him our nature, with all its sufferings and infirmities,—when He touched us every where—in sorrow, and weariness, and poverty, and hunger, and pain, and death. We can suffer nothing which He has not suffered first,—on which He has not laid His hand, and blessed it for His chosen. Thanks be to His Name! It is like honey sweetening everything. And the things that are bitter and acid want the most sweetening. So the good Lord chose poverty and pain. Ease and riches are sweet of themselves. I have heard Father Eudes read of one or two feasts where He was: He blessed joy as well as sorrow,—perhaps lest we should fancy that there was something holy in pain and poverty in themselves, and something wicked in being comfortable and happy. Some people do think so, after all. But I have heard Father Eudes read a great deal more of funerals than feasts, where the blessed Lord was. He seemed to go where people wanted comforting, much oftener than where they were comfortable. He knew that many more would sorrow than rejoice."

What strange eyes Marguerite has! She can look at nothing, but she sees the good God. And the strangest thing is, that it seems to make her happy. It always makes me miserable. To think of God, when I am bright and joyous, is like dropping a black curtain over the brightness. Why cannot I be like Marguerite? I ought to be a great deal happier than she. There is something wrong, somewhere.

Then of course there must be something holy in poverty—voluntary poverty, that is—or why do monks and nuns take the vow of poverty? I suppose there is nothing holy in simply being poor, like a villein. And if our Lord really were poor, when He was on earth, that must have been voluntary poverty. I said as much to Margot.

"Damoiselle," said she, "every man who follows our Lord must carry his cross. His own cross,—not somebody else's. And that means, I think, the cross which the good God lays on His shoulders. The blessed Christ Himself did not cut His own cross. But we others, we are very fond of cutting our crosses for ourselves, instead of leaving the good God to lay them on us. And we always cut them of the wrong wood. We like them very light and pretty, with plenty of carving and gilding. But when the good Lord makes the crosses, He puts no carving on them; and He often hews out very rough and heavy ones. At least, He does so for the strong. He makes them light, sometimes, for the weak; but there is no gilding—only the pure gold of His own smile, and that is not in the cross itself, but in the sunlight which He sends upon it. But my Damoiselle will find, when men sort out the crosses, the strong walk away with the light ones, and the rough and heavy fall to the weak. The good Lord knows better than that."

"But we don't all carry crosses, Margot," said I; "only religious persons."

Marguerite shook her head decidedly.

"Damoiselle, all that learn of the good Lord must bear the cross. He said so. 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me'—and again, 'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.' Father Eudes read them both. My Damoiselle sees—'any man.' That must mean all men."

Well, I cannot understand it I only feel more puzzled than ever. I am sure it would not make me happier to carry a heavy cross. Yet Lady Judith and Marguerite are happy; I can see they are. Religion and good people seem to be full of contradictions. How is one to understand them?

CHAPTER X.

PREPARING FOR THE STRUGGLE.

"He that hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare,

And he that hath one enemy shall find him every where."

I have thought, and thought, about Lady Judith's question concerning perfection, and, as I expected, I cannot see my way through it at all. And what is more, I do not see how to reconcile it with what she said herself of Sister Eudoxia. So this morning I took the liberty of asking her what she meant.

Lady Judith smiled, and replied, "Wert thou puzzled, Helena?"

"Yes, holy Mother," said I, "very much."

"I am glad of it," she answered. "I wanted to puzzle thee, and make thee think."

"I have been thinking a great deal," I said, "but I cannot think my way out of the labyrinth."

"We must take counsel of Holy Writ to find our way out," answered Lady Judith; and she laid her hand on her Greek Bible, which is a very handsome book, bound in carved wood, and locked with a golden clasp. She unlocked it with the little key which hangs from her girdle, and said, "Now listen, Helena. In the days when our Lord dwelt on middle earth, there were certain men amongst the Jews, called Pharisees, who were deemed exceedingly holy persons. So exact were they in the fulfilment of all duties, that they did not reckon their tithes paid, unless they taxed the very pot-herbs in their gardens. Yet our Lord said to His disciples,—'If your righteousness surpass not that of the Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.'"