Indeed no one could look at Sister Avice's gentle
face and think there was much need of the charge.
Sister Avice was one of the women who seem to be especially born for
the gentlest tasks of womanhood. She might have been an excellent
wife and mother, but from the very hour of her birth she had been
vowed to be a nun in gratitude on her mother's part for her father's
safety at Agincourt. She had been placed at Wilton when almost a
baby, and had never gone farther from it than on very rare occasions
to the Cathedral at Salisbury; but she had grown up with a wonderful
instinct for nursing and healing, and had a curious insight into the
properties of herbs, as well as a soft deft hand and touch, so that
for some years she had been sister infirmarer, and moreover the sick
were often brought to the gates for her counsel, treatment, or, as
some believed, even her healing touch.
When Grisell awoke she was alone in the long, large, low room, which
was really built over the Norman cloister. The walls were of pale
creamy stone, but at the end where she lay there were hangings of
faded tapestry. At one end there was a window, through the thick
glass of which could be dimly seen, as Grisell raised herself a
little, beautiful trees, and the splendid spire of the Cathedral
rising, as she dreamily thought, like a finger pointing upwards.
Nearer were several more narrow windows along the side of the room,
and that beside her bed had the lattice open, so that she saw a
sloping green bank, with a river at the foot; and there was a trim
garden between.
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