Aunt _Joyce_ tarried a moment, and drew a long breath. Then she saith in a voice that was calmer and lower-- "_Anstace_ told me I loved not the _Leonard_ that was, but only he that should have been. But I have prayed God day and night, and I will go on yet praying, that the man of my love may be the _Leonard_ that yet shall be,--that some day he may turn back to God and me, and remember the true heart that poured all that love upon him. If it be so, let the Lord order how, and where, and when. For if I may know that it is, when I come into His presence above, I can finish my journey here without the knowledge." "But it were better to know it, Aunt _Joyce_?" saith _Helen_ tenderly. Methinks the tale had stirred her heart very much. "It were happier, _Nelly_," quoth Aunt _Joyce_ softly. "God knoweth whether it were best. If it be so, He will give it me.--And now is the hardest part of my tale to tell. For after a while, _Milly_, this--_Mary_--came to see what _Leonard_ meant, and methinks she came about the same time to the certainty that she loved one who was not _Leonard_. When he had parted from me he sought her, and there was much bitterness betwixt them. At the last she utterly denied him, and shut the door betwixt him and her: for the which he never forgave her, but at a later time, when in the persecutions under King _Henry_ she came into his power, he used her as cruelly as he might then dare to go. I reckon, had it been under _Queen Mary_, he should have been content with nought less than her blood. But it pleased the good Lord to deliver her, he getting him entangled in some briars of politics that you should little care to hear: and so when she was freed forth of prison, he was shut up therein." "Then, Aunt _Joyce_, is he a _Papist_?" saith _Helen_, of a startled fashion. "Ay, _Nell_, he is a black _Papist_. When we all came forth of _Babylon_, he tarried therein." "And what came of her you called _Mary_, if it please you, _Aunt_?" quoth I. "She was wed to one that dwelt at a distance from those parts, _Edith_," saith Aunt _Joyce_, in the constrained tone wherein she had begun her story. "And sithence then have I heard at times of _Leonard_, though never meeting him,--but alway as of one that was journeying from bad to worse--winning hearts and then breaking them. Since Queen _Elizabeth_ came in, howbeit, heard I never word of him at all: and I knew not if he were in life or no, till I set eyes on his face yesterday." We were all silent till Aunt _Joyce_ saith gently-- "Well, _Milly_,--should we have been more kinder if we had let thee alone to break thine heart, thinkest?" "It runneth not to a certainty that mine should be broke, because others were," mutters _Milly_ stubbornly.