On one point this decided Grisell. She looked up at Lambert, and
when he used her title of "Lady," in begging her to leave old Mother
Abra in charge and to come down to supper, she made a gesture of
silence, and as she came down the broad stair--a refinement scarce
known in England--she entreated him to let her be Grisell still.
"Unless he accept me as his wife I will never bear his name," she
said.
"Nay, madame, you are Lady of Whitburn by right."
"By right, may be, but not in fact, nor could I be known as mine own
self without cumbering him with my claims. No, let me alone to be
Grisell as ever before, an English orphan, bower-woman to Vrow
Clemence if she will have me."
Clemence would not consent to treat her as bower-woman, and it was
agreed that she should remain as one of the many orphans made by the
civil war in England, without precise definition of her rank, and be
only called by her Christian name. She was astonished at the status
of Master Groot, the size and furniture of the house, and the
servants who awaited him; all so unlike his little English
establishment, for the refinements and even luxuries were not only
far beyond those of Whitburn, but almost beyond all that she had seen
even in the households of the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick. He had
indeed been bred to all this, for the burghers of Bruges were some of
the most prosperous of all the rich citizens of Flanders in the
golden days of the Dukes of Burgundy; and he had left it all for the
sake of his Clemence, but without forfeiting his place in his Guild,
or his right to his inheritance.
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