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m but me," made she answer, and her voice grew very troubled. "Not even _Aubrey_, nor _Lettice_. _Bess_ guessed at him after awhile, but not till she had seen him divers times. But for me one glimpse was enough." Aunt _Joyce's_ work was still now. "Hadst thou surmised aforetime that it were he?" Aunt _Joyce_ shook her head. "No need for surmising, _Dulcie_," she said. "If I were laid in my grave for a year and a day, I should know his step upon the mould above me." "My poor _Joyce_!" softly quoth my Lady _Stafford_. "Even God hath no stronger word than `passing the love of women.' Yet a woman's love lasts not out to that in most cases." "Her heart lasts not out, thou meanest," saith Aunt _Joyce_. "Hearts are weak, _Dulcie_, but love is immortal." "And hast thou still hope--for him, _Joyce_?" answereth my Lady. "I lost the last atom of mine, years gone." "Hope of his ultimate salvation? Ay--as long as life lasts. I shall give over hoping for it when I see it." "But," saith my Lady slowly, as though she scarce liked to say the same, "how if thou never wert to see it?" "`Between the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I sought, mercy I found.' "Thou wist that epitaph, _Dulcie_, on him that lost life by a fall from the saddle. My seeing it were comfort, but no necessity. I could go on hoping that God had seen it." Aunt _Joyce_ arose and left the chamber. Then saith my Lady _Stafford_ to me-- "There goes a strong soul. There be women such as she: but they are not to be picked, like blackberries, off every bramble. _Edith_, young folks are apt to think love a mere matter of youth and of matrimony. They cannot make a deeper blunder. The longer love lasts, the stronger it groweth." "Always, my Lady?" said I. "Ay," saith she. "That is, if it be love." We wrought a while without more talk: when suddenly saith my Lady _Stafford_:-- "_Edith_, didst thou see this _Tregarvon_, or how he called himself?" "Ay, Madam," said I. "He made up to me one morrow, when my sister _Milisent_ and I were on Saint _Hubert's_ Isle in the mere yonder, and I was sat, a-drawing, of a stone." "Ay so?" quoth she, with some earnestness in her voice. "And what then?" "I think he took not much of me, Madam," said I. My Lady _Stafford_ smiled, yet methought somewhat pensively. "May I wit what he said to thee, _Edith_?" "Oh, a parcel of stuff touching mine hair and mine eyes, and the like,
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