"
Leonard opened his lips, but she waved him to silence. "True, I know
that she was likewise constrained to wed; but she is a widow, and
free to choose for herself. Therefore, either by the bishop, or it
may be through our Holy Father the Pope, by mutual consent, shall the
marriage at Whitburn be annulled and declared void, and I pray you to
accept seisin thereof, while my lady, her Highness the Duchess
Isabel, with the Lady Prioress, will accept me as a Grey Sister."
There was a murmur. Margaret utterly amazed would have sprung
forward and exclaimed, but Leonard was beforehand with her.
"Never! never!" he cried, throwing himself on his knees and mastering
his wife's hand. "Grisell, Grisell, dost think I could turn to the
feather-pated, dull-souled, fickle-hearted thing I know now Eleanor
of Audley to be, instead of you?"
There was a murmur of applause, led by the young Duchess herself, but
Grisell tried still to withdraw her hand, and say in low broken
tones, "Nay, nay; she is fair, I am loathly."
"What is her fair skin to me?" he cried; "to me, who have learnt to
know, and love, and trust to you with a very different love from the
boy's passion I felt for Eleanor in youth, and the cure whereof was
the sight and words of the Lady Heringham! Grisell, Grisell, I was
about to lay my very heart at your feet when the Duke's trumpet
called me away, ere I guessed, fool that I was, that mine was the
hand that left the scar that now I love, but which once I treated
with a brute's or a boy's lightness.
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