present to my mind, and though touched at the news of your visit, I fear that to see you would but awaken unhappy recollections.’ ‘You will remember,’ she continued, ‘that it was my custom to present you with a suit of clothes on each New Year’s Day. But in these last months my sight has been so dimmed with tears that I fear you will think I have matched the colours very ill. Nevertheless I beg that though it be for to-day only you will suffer yourself to be disfigured by this unfashionable garb…’ and a servant held out before him a second[1] suit, which was evidently the one he was expected to wear to-day. The under-stuff was of a most unusual pattern and mixture of colours and did not at all please him; but he could not allow her to feel that she had laboured in vain, and at once put the suit on. It was indeed fortunate that he had come to the Great Hall that day, for he could see that she had counted on it. In his reply he said: ‘Though I came with the hope that you would be the first friend I should greet at this new springtide, yet now that I am here too many bitter memories assail me and I think it wiser that we should not meet.’ To this he added an acrostic poem in which he said that with the mourning dress which he had just discarded so many years of friendship were cast aside that were he to come to her[2] he could but weep. To this she sent in answer an acrostic poem in which she said that in this new season when all things else on earth put on altered hue, one thing alone remained as in the months gone by—her longing for the child who like the passing year had vanished from their sight.
But though hers may have been the greater grief we must not think that there was not at that moment very sage emotion on both sides.
