d her heart very much.

"It were happier, _Nelly_," quoth Aunt _Joyce_ softly. "God knoweth
whether it were best. If it be so, He will give it me.--And now is the
hardest part of my tale to tell. For after a while, _Milly_,
this--_Mary_--came to see what _Leonard_ meant, and methinks she came
about the same time to the certainty that she loved one who was not
_Leonard_. When he had parted from me he sought her, and there was much
bitterness betwixt them. At the last she utterly denied him, and shut
the door betwixt him and her: for the which he never forgave her, but at
a later time, when in the persecutions under King _Henry_ she came into
his power, he used her as cruelly as he might then dare to go. I
reckon, had it been under _Queen Mary_, he should have been content with
nought less than her blood. But it pleased the good Lord to deliver
her, he getting him entangled in some briars of politics that you should
little care to hear: and so when she was freed forth of prison, he was
shut up therein."

"Then, Aunt _Joyce_, is he a _Papist_?" saith _Helen_, of a startled
fashion.

"Ay, _Nell_, he is a black _Papist_. When we all came forth of
_Babylon_, he tarried therein."

"And what came of her you called _Mary_, if it please you, _Aunt_?"
quoth I.

"She was wed to one that dwelt at a distance from those parts, _Edith_,"
saith Aunt _Joyce_, in the constrained tone wherein she had begun her
story. "And sithence then have I heard at times of _Leonard_, though
never meeting him,--but alway as of one that was journeying from bad to
worse--winning hearts and then breaking them. Since Queen _Elizabeth_
came in, howbeit, heard I never word of him at all: and I knew not if he
were in life or no, till I set eyes on his face yesterday."

We were all silent till Aunt _Joyce_ saith gently--

"Well, _Milly_,--should we have been more kinder if we had let thee
alone to break thine heart, thinkest?"

"It runneth not to a certainty that mine should be broke, because others
were," mutters _Milly_ stubbornly.

"Thou countest, then, that he which had been false to a thousand maids
should be true to the one over?" saith Aunt _Joyce_, with a pitying
smile. "Well, such a thing may be possible,--once in a thousand times.
Hardly oftener, methinks, my child. But none is so blind as she that
will not see. I must leave the Lord to open thine eyes,--for I wis He
had to do it for me."

And Aunt _Joyce_ rose up and went aw