Chapter 19

By this good light, a wench of matchless mettle!
This were a leaguer-lass to love a soldier,
To bind his wounds, and kiss his bloody brow,
And sing a roundel as she help'd to arm him,
Though the rough foeman's drums were beat so nigh,
They seem'd to bear the burden.
_Old Play._

When Mistress Margaret entered the Foljambe apartment, she found the
inmates employed in their usual manner; the lady in reading, and her
attendant in embroidering a large piece of tapestry, which had
occupied her ever since Margaret had been first admitted within these
secluded chambers.

Hermione nodded kindly to her visitor, but did not speak; and
Margaret, accustomed to this reception, and in the present case not
sorry for it, as it gave her an interval to collect her thoughts,
stooped over Monna Paula's frame and observed, in a half whisper, "You
were just so far as that rose, Monna, when I first saw you--see, there
is the mark where I had the bad luck to spoil the flower in trying to
catch the stitch--I was little above fifteen then. These flowers make
me an old woman, Monna Paula."

"I wish they could make you a wise one, my child," answered Monna
Paula, in whose esteem pretty Mistress Margaret did not stand quite so
high as in that of her patroness; partly owing to her natural
austerity, which was something intolerant of youth and gaiety, and
partly to the jealousy with which a favourite domestic regards any one
whom she considers as a sort of rival in the affections of her
mistress.

"What is it you say to Monna, little one?" asked the lady.

"Nothing, madam," replied Mistress Margaret, "but that I have seen the
real flowers blossom three times over since I first saw Monna Paula
working in her canvass garden, and her violets have not budded yet."

"True, lady-bird," replied Hermione; "but the buds that are longest in
blossoming will last the longest in flower. You have seen them in the
garden bloom thrice, but you have seen them fade thrice also; now,
Monna Paula's will remain in blow for ever--they will fear neither
frost nor tempest."

"True, madam," answered Mistress Margaret; "but neither have they life
or odour."

"That, little one," replied the recluse, "is to compare a life
agitated by hope and fear, and chequered with success and
disappointment, and fevered by the effects of love and hatred, a life
of passion and of feeling, saddened and shortened by its exhausting
alternations, to a calm and tranquil existence, animated but by a
sense of duties, and only employed, during its smooth and quiet
course, in the unwearied discharge of them. Is that the moral of your