‘Ah, sir, did you say that to comfort and hearten us?’ said Eleanor.
There was a strange look in the startled blue eyes that met hers. ‘Nay, truly, lady, I presumed not so far! I was but wondering whether those who are born to have all the world are in the way of the stair to heaven.’
Meantime the King of Wight had made his request for the presence of the ladies at a supper at Warwick House, and Jean, clasping her hands, implored her uncle to consent.
‘I am sure our mother cannot be the better for our being thus mewed up,’ she cried, ‘and I’ll rise at prime, and tell my beads for her.’
She looked so pretty and imploring that the old man’s heart was melted, all the more that the King was paying more attention to the book and the far less beautiful Eleanor, than to her and the invitation was accepted.
The convent bell rang for nones, and the King joined the devotions of the nuns, though he was not admitted within the choir; and just as these were over, the Countess of Salisbury arrived to take the Lady of Glenuskie to see their old friend, the Mother Clare at St. Katharine’s, bringing a sober palfrey for her conveyance.
‘A holy woman, full of alms-deeds,’ said the King. ‘The lady is happy in her friendship.’
Which words were worth much to Lady Drummond, for the Prioress sent a lay-sister to invite Mother Clare to a refection at the convent.
‘Henry, thou of holy birth, Thou to whom thy Windsor gave Nativity and name and grave! Heavily upon his head Ancestral crimes were visited.’--SOUTHEY.
It suits not with the main thread of our story to tell of the happy and peaceful meetings between the Lady of Glenuskie and her old friend, who had given up almost princely rank and honour to become the servant of the poor and suffering strangers at the wharves of London. To Dame Lilias, Mother Clare’s quiet cell at St. Katharine’s was a blessed haven of rest, peace, and charity, such as was neither the guest-chamber nor the Prioress’s parlour at St. Helen’s, with all the distractions of the princesses’ visitors and invitations, and with the Lady Joanna continually pulling against the authority that the Cardinal, her uncle, was exerting over his nieces.
His object evidently was to keep them back, firstly, from the York party, and secondly, from the King, under pretext of their mourning for their mother; and in this he might have succeeded but for the interest in them that had been aroused in Henry by his companion, namesake, and almost brother, the King of Wight. The King came or sent each day to St. Helen’s to arrange about the requiem at Westminster, and when their late travelling companions invited the young ladies to dinner or to supper expressly to meet the King and the Cardinal--not in state, but at what would be now called a family party--Beaufort had no excuse for a refusal, such as he could not give without dire offence. And, indeed, he was even then obliged to yield to the general voice, and, recalling his own nephew from Normandy, send the Duke of York to defend the remnant of the English conquests.