ONE:The abbot was as good as his word, and presently the fate of the obscure Edith Holgrave became a question which kindled the fires of party zeal in half the noble breasts in the kingdom. It is not to the purpose of our story to describe the intrigue which, at this period, tore asunder the court of Edward. Suffice it to say, that after many stormy discussions in the cabinet, at which the abbot's first messenger, father John, and De Boteler himself, were interrogatedthe church triumphed; the Baron of Sudley was condemned to offer an expiatory gift, and a writ was issued to prohibit the court of assize from trying the prisoner.Sometimes she would have anxious moments, a strange sense of fear. "I'm a bad woman," she would[Pg 350] repeat to herself, and she would dread the thought of her sister Tilly. But the terrors did not last, they were driven away by the remembrance of what her life had been before she met Joeits drabness, its aimless toil, its lassitude, its humiliations. She would have been a fool to spurn her golden chance when it came. It had been her only chance; after all it was not as if she ever could have married. She had had to choose between the life she had led up to that August evening and the life she was leading now, and she could not regret her choice.
THREE:Chapter 11
THREE: