Hearing this tale, I failed both myself and thee, for I
said: 'I pray heaven that, if she come to me, she may never know that
she once won the love of so greatly better a man than I.' But, since I
clasped thy hand in mine, and the Bishop, laying his on either side,
gave thee to be my wife, I have known there would be no peace for me if
I feared to trust thee with this knowledge, because that the man who
loved thee was a better man than the man who, by God's mercy and our
Lady's grace, has won thee."
As the Knight spoke thus, the grey eyes fixed on his face grew wide
with wonder; soft, with a great compunction; yet, at the corners,
shewed a little crinkle in which the Bishop would instantly have
recognised the sign of approaching merriment.
Was this then a sample of the unknown sins of men? Nothing here,
surely, to cause the least throb of apprehension, even to the heart of
a nun! But what strange tale had reached the ears of this most dear
and loyal Knight? She leaned a little nearer to him, speaking in a
tone which was music to his heart.
"Dear Knight of mine," she said, "no tale of a man's love for me can
have been a true one. Yet am I glad that, deeming it true, and feeling
as it was your first impulse to feel, you now tell me quite frankly
what you felt, thus putting from yourself all sense of wrong, while
giving me the chance to say to you, that none more noble than this
faithful Knight can have loved me; for, saving a few Court pages,
mostly popinjays, and Humphry of Camforth, of whom the less said the
better, no other man hath loved me.
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