thou be afeared to
wed with a priest?"

Agnes did not quite like such a home question. Yet she replied calmly,
without any idea of the other question which was coming.

"Methinks, no; not if I truly loved him."

"And couldst thou truly love--_me_, Agnes?"

For an instant Agnes gave no answer. She had as little expected to have
that question asked her as she had expected to be created a duchess.

"Say sooth, if thou shouldst be feared," said John Laurence; and the
faint suspicion of pain in his tone unloosed her lips at once.

Afraid! Afraid to leave all her dreary past behind her, and to begin a
new life, with her cup of gladness full to the very brim? John Laurence
was satisfied with his answer. But, for the first time, not one word of
reading or comment reached Agnes's mind in an intelligible form.

"May be, my gracious Lady, your good Ladyship should like your palfrey
called!" were the words that greeted Agnes when she made her
reappearance in Mistress Winter's kitchen, having certainly been more
forgetful than usual of the flight of time. "Or, may be, it might
please your honourableness to turn your goodly eyes upon the clock, and
behold whether it be meet time for a decent maid to come home of a
feast-day even? By my troth, I would wager thou hadst been to
Westminster and hadst danced a galliardo in the Queen's Grace's hall,
did I not know that none with 's eyes in 's head should e'er so much as
look on thee. Thou idle doltish gadabout! Dost think I keep thee in
board and lodgment and raiment for to go a-gossiping with every idle
companion thou mayest meet? Whither hast been, thou dawdlesome patch?
Up to no good, I warrant thee!"

"I have been to Paul's, Mistress, an' it like you," was all that Agnes
answered.

"Soothly, it liketh me well, sweeting! Alisting some fat pickpurse
friar, with his oily words, belike?"

"I have been a-talking with a friend," said Agnes boldly.

"Marry come up! So my sweet young damosel hath made friends, quotha!
Prithee, was it my Lady's Grace of Suffolk thou wentest forth to see, or
my Lady of Norfolk, trow? Did she give thee a ride o' her velvet
pillion, bestudded with gold?"

Agnes thought it would be best to get it over. The storm which must
come might as well fall soon as late. She stood up, and looked the
terrible Mistress Winter in the face.

"Please it you, Mistress Winter, I am handfast to wedlock; and he that
shall be mine husband it is that I hav