great and noble spirit that had been quenched under the load
of toil and care with which it had battled for thirteen long years.
Faithful, great-hearted Bedford, striving to uphold a losing cause, to
reconcile selfish contentions, to retain conquests that, though unjustly
made, he had no power to relinquish; and all without one trustworthy
relation, with friends and fellow-warriors dying, disputing, betraying,
or deserting, his was as self-devoted and as mournful a career as ever
was run by any prince at any age of the world; and while he slept in his
grave at Rouen, that grave which even Louis XI. respected, Esclairmonde,
as, like a true bedeswoman of St. Katharine, she joined in the orisons
for the repose of the souls of the royal kindred, never heard the name of
the Lord John without a throb of prayer, and a throb too that warmed her
heart with tenderness.

It was some four years later, and the even tenor of Sister Clare's course
had only been interrupted by her kinswoman, Jaquette, making her way to
her to confess her marriage with Richard Wydville, and to entreat her
intercession with the Luxemburg family; when one summer night she was
called on to attend a pilgrim priest from the Holy Land, who had been
landed from a Flemish vessel, and lay dangerously sick at the 'God's
house,' or hospital, by the river side. He was thought by his accent to
be foreign, and Sister Clare was always called on to wait upon the
stranger.

As she stood by his bedside, she beheld a man of middle age, but wasted
with sickness, and with a certain strange look of horror so imprinted on
his brow, that even as he lay asleep, though his mouth was grave and
peaceful, the lines were still there, and the locks that hung from around
his tonsure were of a whiteness that scarce accorded with the features.
It was a face that Esclairmonde could not look at without waking strange
memories; but it was not till the sleeper awakened, opened two dark eyes,
gazed on her with dreamy doubtful wonder, and then clasped his hands with
the murmured thanksgiving, 'My God, hast Thou granted me this? Light of
my life!' that she was assured to whom she was speaking.

Malcolm Stewart it verily was. Canon Malcolm Stewart of Dunkeld was his
proper title, for he had, as she knew, long ceased to be Lord of
Glenuskie. It was not at first that she knew how he had been brought
where she now saw him; but after some few days of her tender care and
skilful leechcraft, he