Say your Ave, and recollect what beseems a modest
maiden."
She spoke with authority, which Thora durst not resist, and withdrew
still pouting and grumbling.
Grisell was indeed young herself and inexperienced, and knew not that
her wrath with the girl might be perilous to herself, while sympathy
might have evoked wholesome confidence.
For the maiden, just developing into northern comeliness, was
attractive enough to win the admiration of soldiers in garrison with
nothing to do, and on her side their notice, their rough compliments,
and even their jests, were delightful compared with the dulness of
her mistress's mourning chamber, and court enough was paid to her
completely to turn her head. If there were love and gratitude
lurking in the bottom of her heart towards the lady who had made a
fair and skilful maiden out of the wild fisher girl, all was
smothered in the first strong impulse of love for this young Ralph
Hart, the first to awaken the woman out of the child.
The obstacles which Grisell, like other prudent mistresses in all
times, placed in the course of this true love, did but serve to
alienate the girl and place her in opposition. The creature had
grown up as wild and untamed as one of the seals on the shore, and
though she had had a little training and teaching of late years, it
was entirely powerless when once the passion was evoked in her by the
new intercourse and rough compliments of the young archer, and she
was for the time at his beck and call, regarding her lady as her
tyrant and enemy.
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