The Duchess Isabel had retired to the Grey Sisters, such scenes being
inappropriate to her mourning, and besides her apartments being
needed for the influx of guests. There, in early morning, before the
revels began, Grisell ventured to ask for an audience, and was
permitted to follow the Duchess when she returned from mass to her
own apartments.
"Ah! my lace weaver. Have you had your share in the revels and
pageantries?"
"I saw the procession, so please your Grace."
"And your old playmate in her glory?"
"Yea, madame. It almost forestalled the glories of Heaven!"
"Ah! child, may the aping of such glory beforehand not unfit us for
the veritable everlasting glories, when all these things shall be no
more."
The Duchess clasped her hands, almost as a foreboding of the day when
her son's corpse should lie, forsaken, gashed, and stripped, beside
the marsh.
But she turned to Grisell asking if she had come with any petition.
"Only, madame, that it would please your Highness to put into the
hands of the new Duchess herself, this offering, without naming me."
She produced her exquisite fabric, which was tied with ribbons of
blue and silver in an outer case, worked with the White Rose.
The Dowager-Duchess exclaimed, "Nay, but this is more beauteous than
all you have wrought before. Ah! here is your own device! I see
there is purpose in these patterns of your web.
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