Sir Geoffrey did not rightly understand his daughter's sorrow. His
"silken tissues and golden cauls" did not raise the bowed head one inch.

"Father!" she whispered, "have you promised him?"

"I have, my child," he answered, softly.

She rose suddenly, and quickly turned to go up the stairs leading to her
own room. At this moment Richard Pynson rose also, and quietly taking
up the book, which had fallen from Margery's lap on the floor, he handed
it to her. She took it with one hand, and gave him the other, but did
not let him see her face. Then she passed into her chamber, and they
heard her fasten the door.

When she had done so, she flung herself down on the rushes [note 1], and
bent her head forward on her knees. The longer she thought over her
prospects, the more dreary and doleful they appeared. Her state of mind
was one that has been touchingly described by a writer who lived three
hundred years later--"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother"--who, of all
who have attempted and failed in the impossible task of rendering the
Psalms into verse, perhaps approached as near success as any one.

"Troublous seas doe mee surrownde;
Saue, O Lord, my sinking soule,
Sinking wheare it feeles no grownde,
In this gulf, this whirling hole;
Wayghting ayde with earnest eying,
Calling God with bootles crying;
Dymme and drye in mee are fownde
Eyes to see, and throat to sounde."

Suddenly, as she sat thus bowed down, too sorrowful for tears, like the
dew to a parched flower came the words of the book--nay, the words of
the Lord--into her soul.

"_Be not your herte afrayed, ne drede it_."

"_And therfore ghe han now sorowe, but eftsoone I schal se ghou, and
ghoure herte schal haue ioie, and no man schal take fro ghou ghoure
ioie. Treuly, treuly, I seie to ghou, if ghe axen the Fadir ony thing
in my name he schal ghyue to ghou_." John xvi. 22, 23.

Now, Margery had neither teacher nor commentary to interpret to her the
words of Scripture; and the result was, that she never dreamed of
modifying any of them, but took the words simply and literally. It
never entered her head to interpret them with any qualification--to
argue that "anything" must mean only some things. Ah! how much better
would it be for us, if we would accept those blessed words as plainly,
as unconditionally, as conclusively, as this poor untaught girl!

But when Margery considered the question more minutely, poor child! she
knew not