Leonard opened his lips, but she waved him to silence. “True, I know that she was likewise constrained to wed; but she is a widow, and free to choose for herself. Therefore, either by the bishop, or it may be through our Holy Father the Pope, by mutual consent, shall the marriage at Whitburn be annulled and declared void, and I pray you to accept seisin thereof, while my lady, her Highness the Duchess Isabel, with the Lady Prioress, will accept me as a Grey Sister.”
There was a murmur. Margaret utterly amazed would have sprung forward and exclaimed, but Leonard was beforehand with her.
“Never! never!” he cried, throwing himself on his knees and mastering his wife’s hand. “Grisell, Grisell, dost think I could turn to the feather-pated, dull-souled, fickle-hearted thing I know now Eleanor of Audley to be, instead of you?”
There was a murmur of applause, led by the young Duchess herself, but Grisell tried still to withdraw her hand, and say in low broken tones, “Nay, nay; she is fair, I am loathly.”
“What is her fair skin to me?” he cried; “to me, who have learnt to know, and love, and trust to you with a very different love from the boy’s passion I felt for Eleanor in youth, and the cure whereof was the sight and words of the Lady Heringham! Grisell, Grisell, I was about to lay my very heart at your feet when the Duke’s trumpet called me away, ere I guessed, fool that I was, that mine was the hand that left the scar that now I love, but which once I treated with a brute’s or a boy’s lightness. Oh! pardon me! Still less did I know that it was my own forsaken wife who saved my life, who tended my sickness, nay, as I verily believed, toiled for me and my bread through these long seven years, all in secret. Yea, and won my entire soul and deep devotion or ever I knew that it was to you alone that they were due. Grisell, Grisell,” as she could not speak for tears. “Oh forgive! Pardon me! Turn not away to be a Grey Sister. I cannot do without you! Take me! Let me strive throughout my life to merit a little better all that you have done and suffered for one so unworthy!”
Grisell could not speak, but she turned towards him, and regardless of all spectators, she was for the first time clasped in her husband’s arms, and the joyful tears of her friends high and low.