"A voice, my lady!" repeated Maud, creeping to Lady Frances, and
remembering the legends they had talked of in the hall--"Did it speak,
my lady?"
"Fool! how could I know it a voice if it had not spoken?" replied Lady
Frances, who, as her temper subsided, felt that she was making herself
ridiculous, as it would not be in keeping with her dignity to repeat the
words she had heard.
"Shall I go down and call up the guard, and the servants, my lady, to
see after this voice?" persisted Maud, with the stupid obstinacy of a
person who can only see one thing at a time.
"Go up to the steeple, and look out--But--no--follow me to the house;
and remember," she added, with all the asperity of a person who is
conscious of having permitted temper to overcome judgment, "that we are
in the house of mourning, and ought not to indulge in any thing like
jest--say nothing of my alarm--I mean of what I heard, to your
companions: it is not worth recording----"
"My lady!"
"Silence, I say!" returned Lady Frances, folding her robe round her with
the dignity of a queen. The woman certainly obeyed; but she could not
resist muttering to herself, "She never will let a body speak when she
takes to those stormy fits. Marry, come up! I wonder who she is!--Well,
she's punishing herself; for I could have told her that out by
East-Church I saw two soldiers and another, who seem to have taken the
wrong instead of the right road; and, after still staying a little at
the Cross, turned back on their steps, so as to come to Cecil Place."
How many bars and pitfalls are in the way of those who would climb
highly, even if they wish to climb honestly and holily! If they stand
as the mark for a multitude's praise, they have also to encounter a
multitude's blame--the rabble will hoot an eagle; and the higher he
soars, the louder will they mock--yet what would they not give for his
wings!
Lady Frances's woman found within her narrow bosom an echo to the sneer
of the mysterious voice; yet, could she have become as Frances Cromwell,
how great would have been her triumph! How curious are the workings of
good and evil in the human heart! How necessary to study them, that so
we may arrive at the knowledge of ourselves.
Yet Maud loved her mistress; and had not Lady Frances reproved her
harshly and unjustly, she would never have thought, "Marry, come up! I
wonder who she is!" The spirit of evil worked at the moment in both--in
the lady, as a triumphant tyrant--in the woman, as an insolent slave.