The autumn was passing into winter before the news reached Constance either of the battle of Agincourt or of the murder on Southampton Green. At first she was utterly crushed and prostrated. The old legal leaven, so hard to work out of the human conscience, wrought upon her with tenfold force, and she declared that God was against her, and was wreaking His wrath upon her for the lie which she had told in denying the validity of her marriage. Was it not evidently so? she asked. Had He not first bereft her of her darling, the precious boy whom her sin had preserved to her? And now not only Edward, but the favourite brother, Dickon, were gone likewise. Herself, her stepmother, her widowed sisters-in-law [Note 1], and the two little children of Richard, were alone left of the House of York. The news of Edward's death she bore with comparative equanimity: it was the sudden and dreadful end of Richard which so completely overpowered her. "Hold thy peace, Maude!" she said mournfully, in answer to Maude's tender efforts to console her. "God is against me and all mine House. We have sinned; or rather, _I_ have sinned,--and have thus brought down sorrow and mourning upon the hearts that were dearest to me. I owe a debt; and it must needs be paid, even to the uttermost farthing." "But, dear my Lady," urged Maude, not holding her peace as requested,--"what do you, to pay so much as one farthing of that debt? Christ our Lord hath taken the same upon Him. A debt cannot be twice paid." "I do verily trust," she said humbly, "that He hath paid for me the debt eternal; yet is there a debt earthly, and this is for my paying." "Never a whit!" cried Maude earnestly. "Dear my Lady, not one cross [farthing] thereof! That which we suffer at the hand of our Father is not debt, but discipline; the chastising of the son, not the work wrung by lash from the slave. `The children are free.'" "Ay, free from the curse and the second death," she said, still despondingly; "but from pains and penalties of sin in this life, Maude, not freed. An' I cut mine hand with yonder knife, God shall not heal the wound by miracle because I am His child." Maude felt that the illustration was true, but she was not sure that it was apposite, neither was she convinced that her own view was mistaken. She glanced at Sir Ademar de Milford, who sat on the settle, studying the works of Saint Augustine, as if to ask him to answer for her. Ademar was no longer the family confessor, for the family had given over confessing; but Archbishop Chichele, professing himself satisfied of his orthodoxy, had revoked the now useless writ of excommunication, and the priest had resumed his duties as chaplain. Ademar laid down his book in answer to the appealing glance from Maude's eyes. "Lady," he said, "how much, I pray you, is owing to your Grace from the young ladies your daughters, for food and lodging?" "Owing from my little maids!" exclaimed Constance.