her prime, for her husband had been carried off by a fever when she was
but nineteen, and her baby with him, whereon she had been brought to
the Hall to nurse Cicely, whose mother was very ill after her birth.
Moreover, she was tall and dark, with black and flashing eyes, for her
father had been a Spaniard of gentle birth, and, it was said, gypsy
blood ran in her mother's veins.

There were but two people in the world for whom Emlyn Stower
cared--Cicely, her foster-child, and a certain playmate of hers, one
Thomas Bolle, now a lay-brother at the Abbey who had charge of the
cattle. The tale was that in their early youth he had courted her, not
against her will, and that when, after her parents' tragic deaths, as a
ward of the former Abbot of Blossholme, she was married to her husband,
not with her will, this Thomas put on the robe of a monk of the lowest
degree, being but a yeoman of good stock though of little learning.

Something in the woman's manner attracted Cicely's attention, and gave a
hint of tragedy. She paused at the door, fumbling with its latch,
which was not her way, then turned and stood upright against it, like a
picture in its frame.

"What is it, Nurse?" asked Cicely in a shaken voice. "From your look you
bear tidings."

Emlyn Stower walked forward, rested one hand upon the oak table and
answered--

"Aye, evil tidings if they be true. Prepare your heart, my sweet."

"Quick with them, Emlyn," gasped Cicely. "Who is dead? Christopher?"