"I tell you no! He has fulfilled his
promise; I fulfil mine. He has his freedom. Let him go! For the
rest, we will find the way to make him good husband to you, my
wench," and as Harry murmured something, "There's work enow in hand
without spending our horses' breath and our own in chasing after a
runaway groom. A brief space we will wait till the storm be over."
Grisell shrank back to pray at a little side altar, telling her
beads, and repeating the Latin formula, but in her heart all the time
giving thanks that she was going back to Bernard and her mother,
whose needs had been pressing strongly on her, yet that she might do
right by this newly-espoused husband, whose downcast, dejected look
had filled her, not with indignation at the slight to her--she was
far past that--but with yearning compassion for one thus severed from
his true love.
When the storm had subsided enough for these hardy northlanders to
ride home, and Grisell was again perched behind old Cuthbert Ridley,
he asked, "Well, my Dame of Copeland, dost peak and pine for thy
runaway bridegroom?"
"Nay, I had far rather be going home to my little Bernard than be
away with yonder stranger I ken not whither."
"Thou art in the right, my wench. If the lad can break the marriage
by pleading precontract, you may lay your reckoning on it that so he
will."
When they came home to the attempt at a marriage-feast which Lady
Whitburn had improvised, they found that this was much her opinion.
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