Edith was the
only one who seemed to disdain these ordinary channels of sorrow.
Without a sigh, without a tear, without a word of upbraiding, she
attended upon the Queen, whose weak temperament showed her sorrow
in violent hysterical ecstasies and passionate hypochondriacal
effusions, in the course of which Edith sedulously and even
affectionately attended her.
"It is impossible she can have loved this knight," said Florise
to Calista, her senior in attendance upon the Queen's person.
"We have been mistaken; she is but sorry for his fate, as for a
stranger who has come to trouble on her account."
"Hush, hush," answered her more experienced and more observant
comrade; "she is of that proud house of Plantagenet who never own
that a hurt grieves them. While they have themselves been
bleeding to death, under a mortal wound, they have been known to
bind up the scratches sustained by their more faint-hearted
comrades. Florise, we have done frightfully wrong, and, for my
own part, I would buy with every jewel I have that our fatal jest
had remained unacted.
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