Her mother did not scruple to try to rouse her with
calls of "Grizzy! Look up, wench!" but could elicit nothing but a
half turn on the pillow, and a little louder moan, and Master Miles,
who was still watching, absolutely refused to let his patient be
touched or shaken.
"Well a day!" said Lady Whitburn, softened for a moment, "what the
Saints will must be, I trow; but it is hard, and I shall let St.
Cuthbert of Durham know it, that after all the candles I have given
him, he should have let my poor maid be so mauled and marred, and
then forsaken by the rascal who did it, so that she will never be
aught but a dead weight on my two fair sons! The least he can do for
me now is to give me my revenge upon that lurdane runaway knight and
his son. But he hath no care for lassies. Mayhap St. Hilda may
serve me better."
Wherewith the Lady of Whitburn tramped down stairs. It may be feared
that in the ignorance in which northern valleys were left she was
very little more enlightened in her ideas of what would please the
Saints, or what they could do for her, than were the old heathen of
some unknown antiquity who used to worship in the mysterious circles
of stones which lay on the downs of Amesbury.
CHAPTER IV--PARTING
There in the holy house at Almesbury
Weeping, none with her save a little maid.
TENNYSON, Idylls of the King.
The agitations of that day had made Grisell so much worse that her
mind hardly awoke again to anything but present suffering from fever,
and in consequence the aggravation of the wounds on her neck and
cheek.
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