At this instant an attendant entered, and delivered a letter to her lord, from the abbot of Winchcombe, adding that two messengers were waiting in the hall.Naomi slept too, huddled in a chair, every now and then a sob quivering through her. The winter dawn slowly crept in on her, showing her pitiful figureshowing Mrs. Backfield sick and puffy with tears, Reuben dry-eyed beside the bed, and Harry respited in sleep. Outside the crest of Boarzell was once more visible in the growing lightdark, lumpish, malevolent, against the kindling of the sky.
FORE:Have pity, my true love, have pity on me!"Father John, who, for obvious reasons, had not been forbidden to leave the abbey, was, one evening, in the course of a solitary walk, accosted by the wife of this man.
"You mustn't fret, Reuben.""Then what is the design of this rising?" again asked Sudbury."My lord," said Calverley; "the evening before you left the castle for London, I went to the maiden's cottage to ask her hand; Holgrave immediately came in, and I then distinctly told him that your lordship had given me the maiden's freedom, and also had consented that I should wed her, and yet, you see what regard he has paid to your will!"