"Please it your Ladyship, the little maid is Beatrice—so baptized by Dan Robesart this afternoon. For the knave, being born but an hour back, he is not yet baptized; but they think to call him Lawrence." Both names went down on the Countess’s tablet, after Guenllian had lighted a candle for that purpose. "Did David give the thralls to wit of the games and rejoicings allowed to-morrow?" "Ay, my Lady: and he saith one and all were greatly gladded thereby. My young Lord shall be right welcome to all his vassals some day to be." The Countess drew a long breath of semi-apprehension. "May he be none the less desired, God grant, when they shall lay his head beneath the mould! O my maid, how great and awesome a thing is the life of a man on earth!" "Madam, I heard once the parson of Ludgarshal, Dan John, to say"—— "Have on. A good man is Dan John. What said he?" "That our Lord bound Him to care for the childer of them that feared Him; and that no prayer so made should ever be lost." "But how answered?" was the low-toned reply. "Wenteline, our prayers be sometimes heard in a manner that crusheth the heart of him that prayed them. If the babe were to die!" "Very dear Lady, it might be, elsewise, that a twenty years’ space hereafter, you should heartily wish that he had died the sooner. Surely it can be no evil thing for a little child to go right to God, while he is yet lapped about with the white robes of his chrisom." "I have buried three, Wenteline: and of them one went so. The other were pretty little childer that prattled at my knee. And it was like burying a piece of mine own heart to part with every one." "Yet now, my Lady—would you have them back now?" "Know I what I would? Surely it is better for them. And may God’s will be done. Only to-night, Wenteline—to-night, holding that little babe, the thought came sorrowfully of my Roger, and how he faded from me like a white flower of the earth, or a star that goes out in the sky. Hand me yonder French Bible, Wenteline. Let me read a little touching the City where my childer dwell, and the King unto whose presence they be gone. May be it shall still my yearning when I think of them as there, and not here." There were no Bibles at that date but in French or Latin; seven years were yet to elapse before John Wycliffe, to whom Guenllian had just referred, was to begin the translation of the first English Bible. But French Bibles and Latin Psalters were no unusual possession of noble families. Those families who were not noble were expected to get to heaven without any; for one of the most singular medieval ideas was that which restricted all intellect to those of noble blood. Blood and brains went together. If a man had not the former, it was out of all calculation that he should possess the latter.