"Is it so?" said my aunt coolly. "Still, look it close in the face. Old
Im Hoff--I have read the letter-commands your lover to give you up and do
his bidding. Yet, child, does he take good care not to write this to
you. Finding it over hard to say it himself, he leaves the task to
Margery. And as for that letter; a Lenten jest I called it yestereve;
and so it is verily! Read it once more. Why, it is as dripping with
love as a garment drips when it is fished out of a pool! While he is
trying to shut the door on you he clasps you to his heart. Peradventure
his love never glowed so hotly, and he was never so strongly drawn to you
as when he wrote this paltry stuff to burst the sacred bands which bind
you together. Are you so dull as not to feel this?"

"Nay, I see it right well," cried Ann eagerly, "I knew it when I first
read the letter. But that is the very point! Must not a lover who can
barter away his love for filthy lucre be base indeed? If when he ceased
to be true he had likewise ceased to love, if the fickle Fortunatus had
wearied of his sweetheart--then I could far more easily forgive."

"And do you tell me that your heart ever throbbed with true love for
him?" asked her friend in amazement, and looking keenly into her eyes as
though she expected her to say No. And when Ann cried: "How can you even
ask such a question?" My aunt went on: "Then you did love him? And
Margery tells me that you and she have made some strange compact to make
other folks happy. Two young maids who dare to think they can play at
being God Almighty! And the Magister, I conceive, was to be the first to
whom you proposed to be a willing sacrifice, let it cost you what it may?
That is how matters stand?"

Ann was not now so ready to nod assent, and my aunt murmured something I