Jennifer (if we die not aforetime), and we shall suffer pain, and likewise shall enjoy pleasure. See you not what a wizard I am?”

Tremayne laughed merrily as he rose to depart.

“I shall look to hear if Mrs Trevor be right in her prophecy,” said he.

“We will give you to know that in a month’s time,” answered John Avery rather drily.

In less than a month the news had to be sent, for a stranger arrived. It was Mr Monke. Jennifer was delighted, except for one item. She had announced that the stranger would be fair, and Mr Monke was dark. In this emergency she took refuge, as human nature is apt to do, in exaggerating the point in respect to which she had proved right, and overlooking or slighting that whereon she had proved wrong.

“I might readily blunder in his fairness,” she observed in a self-justifying tone, “seeing it did but lie in the brightness of the flame.”

“Not a doubt thereof,” responded John Avery in a tone which did not tranquillise Jennifer.

When there happened to be no one in the hall but himself and Isoult, Mr Monke came and stood by her as she sat at work.

“Wish me happiness, Mrs Avery,” he said in a low but very satisfied voice.

Isoult Avery was a poor guesser of riddles. She looked up with an air of perplexed simplicity.

“Why, Mr Monke, I do that most heartily at all times,” she answered. “But what mean you?”

“That God hath given me the richest jewel He had for me,” he said, in the same tone as before.

Then Isoult knew what he meant. “Is it Frances?” she asked, speaking as softly as he had done.

“It is that fair and shining diamond,” he pursued, “known among men as the Lady Frances Basset.”

For a moment Isoult was silent, and if Mr Monke could have read the thoughts hidden behind that quiet face, perhaps he would not have felt flattered. For Isoult was wondering in her own mind whether she ought to be glad or sorry. But the next moment her delicate instinct had told her what to answer.

“Mr Monke,” she said, looking up again, “I do most heartily wish happiness to both you and her.”

And Mr Monke never guessed from any thing in the quiet face what the previous thought had been.

The next day brought a letter to Isoult from Lady Frances herself; and the last relic of Jennifer’s uneasiness was appeased by the fair hair and beard of the messenger. She only said now that there might have been two strangers in the fire; she ought to have looked more carefully.

All was smooth water now at Crowe. Lady Lisle had given way, but not until Frances plainly told her that she had urged this very match earnestly before, and now that she was reluctantly endeavouring to conform to her wishes, had turned round to the opposing side. Philippa was more readily won over. Lady Frances had told Mr Monke honestly that a great part of her heart lay in the grave of John Basset; but that she thoroughly esteemed himself, and such love as she could give him he should have.

“I trust,” she wrote to Isoult, “that we may help, not hinder, the one the other on the way to Heaven. We look to be wed in June next, after the new fashion, in the English tongue. Pray meanwhile for me, dear heart, that I may ‘abide in Him.’”

When Isoult came down-stairs from the careful perusal of her letter, she heard Dr Thorpe’s voice in the hall, and soon perceived that her husband and he were deep in religious conversation.

“Softly, Jack!” Dr Thorpe was saying as she entered. “Methinks thou art somewhat too sweeping. We must have priests, man (though they need not be ill and crafty men); nor see I aught so mighty wrong in calling the Lord’s Table an altar. Truly, myself I had liefer say ‘table’; yet would I not by my good will condemn such as do love that word ‘altar.’ Half the mischief that hath arisen in all these battles of religion now raging hath come of quarrelling over words. And ’tis never well to make a martyr or an hero of thine adversary.”

“I have no mind to make a martyr of you, my dear old friend,” answered Avery, “in whatsoever signification. I see well what you would be at, though I see not with you. And I would put you in mind, by your leave, that while true charity cometh of God, there is a false charity which hath another source.”

“But this is to split straws, Jack,” said the Doctor.

“I pray you pardon me,” replied he, “but I think not so. I know, Doctor, you do incline more toward the Lutheran than I, and therefore ’tis like that such matters may seem smaller unto you than to me. But when—”

“I incline toward the truth,” broke in Dr Thorpe, bluntly.

“We will both strive our best so to do, friend,” gently answered Avery. “But, as I was about to say, when you come to look to the ground of this matter, you shall see it (if I blunder not greatly) to be far more than quarrelling over words or splitting of straws. The calling of men by that name of priest toucheth the eternal priesthood of the Lord Christ.”

“As how?” queried the old man, resting his hands on his staff, and looking Avery in the face.

“As thus,” said he. “Cast back your eyes, I pray you, to the times of the old Jewish laws, and tell me wherefore they lacked so many priests as all the sons of Aaron should needs be. I mean, of course, so many at one time.”

“Why, man! one at once should have been crushed under the work!” answered Dr Thorpe. “If one man had been to slay Solomon his twenty-two thousand sacrifices, he should not have made an end by that day month.”

“Good. Then the lesser priests were needed, because of the insufficiency of the high priest for all that lacked doing?”

“That I allow,” said Dr Thorpe, after some meditation.

“See you what you allow, friend?” Avery answered, softly. “If, then, the lesser priests be yet needed, it must be by reason that the High Priest is yet insufficient, and the sacrifice which He offered is yet incomplete.”

“Nay, nay, Jack, nay!” cried the old man, much moved, and shaking his head.

“It must be so, dear friend. To what good were those common and ordinary priests, save to aid the high priest in that which, being but a man, he might not perform alone? Could the high priest have sufficed alone, what need were there of other? But our High Priest sufficeth, and hath trodden the wine-press alone. His sacrifice is perfect, is full, is eternal. There needeth no repeating—nay, there can be no repeating thereof. What do we, then, with priests now? Where is their sacrifice? And a priest that sacrificeth not is a gainsaying of words. Friend, whoso calleth him a priest now, by that word denieth the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus.”

“And whoso calleth the Table an altar—” began Dr Thorpe.

“Is guilty of the same sin,” pursued he; “the same affront unto the Majesty of Him that will not give His glory to an other.”

“They mean it not so, I verily believe,” responded Dr Thorpe, a little uneasily. “They mean assuredly to do Him honour.”

“And He can see the difference,” said Avery, tenderly, “betwixt the denial of Peter that loved Him, and the betrayal of Judas that hated Him. Our eyes are rarely fine enough for that. More than once or twice, had the judgment lain with us, we had, I think, condemned Peter and quitted Judas.”

“I would all this variance betwixt Lutherans and Gospellers might cease!” resumed Dr Thorpe, rather bitterly. “When we should be pointing our spears all against the enemy, we are bent on pricking of each other!”

“A vain wish, friend,” answered he. “So far as I can see, that hath been ever since the world began, and will last unto the world’s end. I am not so fond as to look for Christ’s kingdom until I see the King. The fair Angel of Peace flieth in His train; but, methinks, never out of it.”

“It seemeth,” said Dr Thorpe, “as though the less space there were betwixt my doctrine and thine, the more bitterly must thou and I wrangle!”

“Commonly it is so,” replied Avery.

“And while these real battles be fighting,” pursueth he, “betwixt Christ’s followers and Christ’s foes,—what a sight is it to see the followers dividing them on such matters as—whether childre shall be baptised with the cross or no; whether a certain garment shall be worn or no; whether certain days shall be kept with public service or no! Tush! it sickeneth a man with the whole campaign.”

Both rose, but after his farewell Dr Thorpe broke out again, as though he could not let the matter drop.

“Do the fools think,” asked the old man, “that afore the angels will open the gate of Heaven unto a man, they fall a-questioning him—to wit, whether salt were used at his baptism; whether his body were buried looking toward the East or the West; whether when he carried his Bible he held it in his right hand or his left? Dolts, idiots, patches! (Fools.) It should do me a relief to duck every man of them in the Tamar.”

“And cause them to swallow a dose of physic at afterward?” laughed Avery.

“It were hemlock, then,” said Dr Thorpe, grimly.

“Nay, friend, not so bad as that, methinks. But shall I give you one dose of a better physic than any of yours? ‘By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one toward another.’”

“How are they to know it now?” said Dr Thorpe, despairingly. “How are they to know it? Well, I know not; maybe thou art not so far-off, Jack; but for all other I know—”

And away he went, shaking his grey head.

Lady Frances and Mr Monke were married when the summer came. John Avery and Isoult were invited to the wedding; and Philippa sent a special message requesting that their little Kate might be included; for, said she, “Arthur shall be a peck of trouble, and an’ he had one that he might play withal he should be the less.”

“List thee, sweet heart! thou art bidden to a wedding!” said Jennifer to Kate.

“What is a wedding?” inquired four-year-old Kate, in her gravest manner. “Is it a syllabub?”

“Ay, sweet heart; ’tis a great syllabub, full of sugar,” answered Jennifer, laughing.

“That is as it may be, Mrs Jennifer,” observed Dr Thorpe, who was present. “I have known that syllabub full of vinegar. That is, methinks, a true proverb,—‘If Christ be not asked at the match, He will never make one at the marriage-feast.’ And ’tis a sorry feast where He sitteth not at the table.”

“I think He shall not be absent from this,” said Isoult, softly.

So Kate went to Crowe with her parents; but her baby brother Walter, a year old, was left behind in charge of Jennifer.

The evening after their arrival, the bride took Isoult apart, and, rather to her surprise, asked her if she thought that the dead knew what was passing in this world. To such a question there was but one answer. Isoult could not tell.

“Isoult,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “I would not have him know of this, if it be so. And can that be right and good which I would not he should know?”

Isoult needed not to ask her who “he” was.

“Nay, sweet heart!” said she, “thinkest thou he would any thing save thy comfort and gladness? He is passed into the land where (saith David) all things are forgotten—to wit, (I take it) all things earthly and carnal, all things save God; and when ye shall meet again in the body, it shall be in that resurrection where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are equal unto the angels.”

“All things forgotten!” she faltered. “Hath he forgot me? They must sleep, then; that is a kind of forgetting. But if I were awake and witful, I never could forget him. It were not I that did so.”

“Let us leave that with God, beloved,” answered Isoult.

“O Isoult,” she murmured, her tears beginning to drop fast, “I would do God’s will, and leave all to Him: but is this God’s will? Thou little knowest how I am tortured and swayed to and fro with doubt. It was easier for thee, that hadst but a contract to fulfil.”

Isoult remembered the time before she had ever seen her husband, when it did not look very easy. She scarcely knew what she ought to answer. She only said—

“Dear heart, if thou do truly desire to do only God’s will, methinks He will pardon thee if thou lose thy way.”

“It looketh unto me at times,” she said, “as if it scarce could be right, seeing it should lift me above want, and set me at ease.”

This was a new thought to Isoult, and she was puzzled what to say. But in the evening she told John, and asked his advice. Much to her astonishment, he, usually gentle, pulled to the casement with a bang.

“Is that thine answer, Jack?” said Isoult, laughing.

“Somewhat like it,” answered he drily. “’Tis no marvel that ill men should lose the good way, when the true ones love so much to walk in byepaths.”

“Thou riddlest, Jack,” said Isoult.

“Tell me, dear heart,” he answered, “doth God or Satan rule the world?”

“God ruleth the world, without doubt,” said she, “but if Satan spake sooth unto our Lord, he hath the power of the glory of it.”

“Did Satan ever speak sooth, thinkest?” he replied smiling somewhat bitterly. “Howbeit to leave that point,—doth God, or doth Satan, mete out the lives of God’s people, and give them what is best for them?”

“God doth, assuredly,” said she.

“Well said,” answered he. “Then (according unto this doctrine) when God giveth His child a draught of bitter physic, he may with safety take and drink it; but when He holdeth forth a cup of sugared succades (sweetmeats), that must needs be refused. Is it so?”

“Jack!” wonderingly cried Isoult.

“There be that think so,” he made answer, “but I had scarce accounted my Lady Frances one ere now. Set the thing afore her in that light. This is the self spring whence cometh all the monasteries and nunneries, and anchorites’ cells in all the world. Is God the author of darkness, and not of light? Doth He create evil, and not good? Tell her, when the Lord holdeth forth an honeycomb, He would have her eat it, as assuredly as, when He giveth a cup of gall into her hand, He meaneth she should drink it. And methinks it can scarce be more joyful to Him to watch her drink the gall than eat the honeycomb.”

The last words were uttered very tenderly.

When Isoult told Frances what John had said, the tears rose to her eyes.

“O Isoult! have I been wronging my God and Father?” she said in a quivering voice. “I never meant to do that.”

“Tell Him so, sweet heart,” answered Isoult.

Isoult thought her husband was right, when, on the following day, she came across the text, “The Lord that hath pleasure in the prosperity of His people.” But in her innocent way she showed it to John, and asked him if he thought it meant that it was a pleasure to the Lord Himself to bestow happiness on His people. John smiled at her, as he often did.

“Sweet heart,” he answered, “doth it please or offend thee, when thou dost kiss Kate, and comfort her for some little trouble, and she stayeth her crying, and smileth up at thee?”

“Why, Jack, ’tis one of my greatest pleasures,” answered Isoult.

Very gravely and tenderly he answered,—“‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.’”

On the 17th of June, Isoult Avery wrote in her diary:—

“The church-bells are making music in mine ears as I sit to write. An hour gone, Frances and Mr Monke went forth, no longer twain, but one. God go with her, and bless her, this dear sister of mine heart, and comfort her for all she hath lost—ay, as ‘one whom his mother comforteth!’”

The ink was scarcely dry from this entry when Philippa Basset