“Dogs are we!” so had cried his sire. No dog was he to fawn and cringe at the foot of his mistress, but in very sooth a man kneeling in adoration at his lady’s shrine. And as he was, so she accepted him, this Jester who could not jest. She saw the man beneath the fool, and stooping from her heights recognized his manhood. Even so might the Gracious Mother of God bend from Heaven to a suppliant son of earth. There was no hint of blasphemy in his thought; in his very manhood he was humble. You see in him a man who had had no thought for women. Two only had held his love,—his mother, at whose knee in childhood he had prayed, and that other Mother to whom his prayers had been addressed, “_Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostræ._” Therefore he brought to his lady a very clean heart, a very humble heart, one which in all childlikeness accepted her favours, though warm with the strength of a man’s devotion it sang a man’s praises in her honour. You must not think that he lifted his eyes one whit higher than the hem of her robe; she was to him a very queen, himself the humblest of her subjects. Yet he knew himself now as man, and no fool, his adoration clean and strong, no hint of the fawner in his attitude. That the knowledge brought him joy you may well believe. His heart was attuned to the joyous note of spring. Sun, the flowering earth, the soft winds, all were to him but symbols of his happiness, portraying for him his lady’s praises. Looking back on his first meeting with her he still felt a flush of shame that he had momentarily doubted her truth, had spoken words that held a note of irony. For that he struck his breast, cried “_Mea culpa_,” saw himself the fool his garb set forth. Truth incarnate in woman, so he saw her now, loftily enshrined beside his mother, the shrine I think very near to that of the Mother of God. Kneeling afar at Mass he saw her bend her head in adoration, rejoiced to think they were at one in this great Act of Worship. The whiteness of his love we may well believe lifted him nearer God. Having, then, some hint of his mood you will know that Peregrine sitting by the sundial found the morning very fair. Having mused, and finding it hard to say by what precise steps he had reached his present goal, he turned from musing, content merely that here he was. Light of heart he looked across the park, saw the shadows lying still and blue beneath the trees, saw the purple outline of the moorland, heard a lark pouring forth exuberant song from the cloudless sky. At the further end of the grass sward, on a stone bench, Brigid was sitting with Mary Chester. Embroidery, as their custom was, occupied their fingers, or it would be safer to say that Mary’s were occupied thereby. Brigid for the most part held her needle idly, her eyes more often roving to the motionless figure by the sundial than bent upon her work.